dustbury.com: Mourning <i>Sedition</i>

15 October 2006

Mourning Sedition

The crack young staff of The Hatemonger's Quarterly have thought about the Air America Radio bankruptcy filing, and have decided that it's the government's fault:

Well, allow us to be more specific: We believe that the publicly-funded festival of upper-middle class leftism known as National Public Radio (a.k.a. National Palestinian Radio) had more than a little to do with the Air America belly flop. So, if our rabid left-wing pals, irate over Air America's manifest failure, want to point the finger of blame at anyone, perhaps they should tilt it in the direction of Uncle Sam. Or, at least, Garrison Keillor.

If you ask us, it's a very simple matter. "Progressive" radio will inevitably have a tough time winning fans thanks to the popularity of NPR in left-liberal circles. Apparently, there are only so many tote bags you can own, only so many soporific radio personalities you can stomach.

There are a couple of obviously-pickable nits here:

A Prairie Home Companion, despite its ubiquity on NPR stations, is not in fact an NPR production.
Taxpayer funding via the Corporation for Public Broadcasting is a relatively small percentage of NPR's budget, a somewhat-higher (but still small) percentage of local NPR affiliate budgets.

Still, the Hatemongers' point seems valid: there is only so much audience for any given radio format. NPR is the 800-pound gorilla in the left-of-political-center marketplace; farther to the left, there are a handful of community stations and the Pacifica network, and that's about it.

Posted at 11:47 AM to Overmodulation

The Hatemonger is right about NPR crowding out lefty radio.

It's interesting to hear the BBC news service (I'll avoid some oh-so-tempting scare quotes here-I hate scare quotes), which is available on some NPR stations. The Beeb makes NPR sound like a bunch of Republicans. I imagine that's true for Pacifica as well.

Posted by: John Salmon at 3:59 PM on 15 October 2006

I also agree with the Happy Hatemongers' premise here. Air America was competing with the NPR "brand" (they did not necessarily have to produce the shows, just air/endorse them). NPR's quality, built over many years, is far superior to anything the Airheads could produce. I listen to NPR religiously even though I find their conclusions and POV generally risible. You want to hear the other side, and they make their case as palatable as I think is possible.

AA, on the other hand, was simply unlistenable. If you wanted to hate along with the host, it was fine for that, but they sure weren't making any converts, which is a huge mistake for any new venture. New listeners should have been a precious commodity, but for this crowd, if you didn't buy in completely to whatever was on tap that day, you were told to get lost. And get lost they did. They all did. Except for the sycophants, stayed away in droves, they did.

Last one out of the station please turn out the lights.

(I realize they may just reorganize their finances and start up again. It won't matter if they do, the results will be the same.)

Posted by: Mister Snitch! at 6:19 PM on 15 October 2006