Tuesday night I lost my way on AM radio and accidentally stepped into a steaming pile of Air America. Preoccupied with traffic, my Bluetooth and a mango smoothie while driving home, I neglected to switch stations upon the conclusion of my beloved Phil Hendrie Show. I realized trouble was afoot when I heard an unfamiliar voice mutter, “From eight years of an abomination, to eight years of an Obama nation.” Oi vey.
After the requisite Obama orgasm, the voice, belonging to show host Richard Greene, explained that this show was the West Coast launch of something called Hollywood Clout, a forum for Hollywood celebrities to use their influence on the radio to “celebrate the New America” (translation: to peddle the predicable, de rigueur political agenda of mainstream Hollywood). Finally! Where has this Richard Greene, this visionary pioneer, been all this time?! At last, refuge for displaced, left-leaning celebs to speak their mind! Free at last. Free at last… and so forth. The inaugural celebrity of the inaugural West Coast show was announced as Daphne Zuniga, former Melrose Place tart and occasional Gavin Newsom plaything. I switched to sports talk.
This was Air America, or whatever carrion remains these days following the October 2006 bankruptcy filing of the leftist radio network. Like most people who were ever aware of Air America in the first place–and there weren’t many–I long ago forgot about its existence. Evidently it’s back… or it never left… or whatever. Following reorganization, downsizing and a change of ownership, from the ashes of Air America Radio has risen the glorious house fly of Air America Media. Now it’s Media, not Radio… Get it?
This second generation Air America has been moping around national airwaves for nearly two years, serving up programming piecemeal to its mish-mash of lowly, ratings-deprived affiliates (including Phil Hendrie’s new LA home, KTLK AM 1150). I gathered from my brief, unintended exposure that the network’s new, image-defining buzzword is progressive. This is not a network of bitter, enraged liberals prattling on about stolen elections and missing WMDs. This is a network of empowered, high-minded progressives prattling on about stolen elections and missing WMDs. Same pig, different lipstick.
On this night, Richard Greene wasn’t just progressive, he was giddy–giddier than even Keith Olbermann when he first heard Tim Russert was dead. For this was more than simply the launch of Hollywood Clout West, this was the beginning of a week-long pre-party leading up to the Inauguration of The Great Man, and the concurrent tacit validation of the network’s existence. The operating theory, as I gleaned from Mr. Greene, seems to be that Obama will be the defibrillator the sinking network has long sought, and Air America will ride his Apollonian coattails into relevance. With Obama finally in office, Air America can reposition itself as a community of love for Obama, instead of bile for George Bush, then reap the succulent fruit of the Obama tree. Sounds good on paper, why not? This isn’t your father’s Air America. This is Air America 2.0.
This brings me to the most interesting aspect of Air America (yes, there is one): its catastrophic failure. As far as I’m aware, an adequate, satisfying postmortem on the first incarnation of Air America has yet to be produced. How did this liberal wet dream become such a nightmare? Democrats are the ruling class of Hollywood and the mainstream media. What was so tricky about radio that they couldn’t figure out? They entered the market with a daunting war chest and a comprehensive national marketing campaign in the form of gushing, buttery media coverage, but still flamed out. Why couldn’t they simply apply all of the lessons learned over the years from selling bad movies, bad TV and bad acting into selling bad radio? Selling is selling, right? Ultimately, the product should be irrelevant. Certainly it must be more difficult to convince the moving-going public that Ben Affleck isn’t a talentless hack but a viable leading man worthy of a $14 ticket than it is to convince a radio audience that Janeane Garofalo can make you hate George Bush even more, and at no charge.
So what happened? One leading theory blames Air America’s ill-conceived top-down marketing strategy. Instead of doing the whole populist, grass-roots thing and building an audience from the ground up, Air America used its bloated coffers to ram its way into the big, coveted markets and simply assumed people would listen. A fortune was spent on market entry, but then the product–completely untested–couldn’t deliver. Air America bought the best hooker in town but forgot all about the Viagra.
Here the situation gets murky. What made the product so useless? Perhaps there never was a place for new liberal talk radio to begin with because that function was already served by NPR and complemented by the mainstream media? Maybe the Bush-bad-Bush-dumb-Bush-kill mantra 24/7 became tedious too quickly? Maybe heavy-handed urban elitism doesn’t appeal to Middle America, liberal or otherwise? Perhaps the problem was the talent chosen to deliver the message? “Uninteresting, un-engaging, whiny, shrill and didactic with little to no prior radio experience” were probably not the best job requirements in retrospect. Could the problem have been with the audience? Surely liberal listeners are too full of sunshine, rainbows and hope to sully themselves with the vitriol inherent to partisan talk radio the way conservative listeners do? Or, maybe the problem was a more practical one – a message consistently chastising corporations and the institutions of capitalism might have frightened off major advertisers, hampering the network’s long-term sustainability?
Fortunately for Air America, it may never have to figure out precisely what went wrong. The marriage of the new President to the new Congress could spawn a return to the Fairness Doctrine, sparing Air America the indignity of having to produce a desirable, market-worthy product. After all, what’s our government for if not bailing out incompetence and propping up failed business ventures at taxpayer expense?
For now, Air America will be drunk on Obama and enjoy a spiritual renaissance. Whether or not this translates into a palpably different product remains to be seen. Likewise, there is no real evidence to suggest that a shift from the “Bush lied, babies died” model to an Obama worship paradigm will prove economically effective. Despite their profound efforts to parrot conservative talk radio, liberals never understood what actually made it work. My guess is they still don’t understand. That knowledge-gap, new administration or not, will keep Air America a wretched, un-listenable mess relegated to the squalid fringe of AM radio.