The new Air America liberal radio network has been launched. Here in L.A., it’s at 1580 AM.
The problem? My digital car radio doesn’t go that far on the dial!
I guess conservatives are right, the Left really has fallen off the edge.
UPDATED: I’ve been listening to the station online, and am liking most of it so far, not least of all because it has relatively few commercials thus far. Janeane Garofalo’s show is the one that I most often hear (there’s some other one after her with a more strident female host who isn’t that entertaining). Janeane’s really taking to the format well — I don’t think her ideological opponents will be able to dismiss her as “just a comedian” for much longer, as they can (with some justification) with Al Franken still. As much as Al amuses me, his last book really has a split personality between trying to score serious political points, and trying to be funny with silly exaggerations.
I think the distinction may be that Janeane’s comedy has always been somewhat political, and Al’s never used to be until he became obsessed with Rush Limbaugh. He’s still funnier doing Stuart Smalley than he is writing satirical fiction about Limbaugh and O’Reilly in Vietnam.
Air America’s promos are also appealing, among them, “The laughingstock of talk radio, ” and “Treason was never this much fun.” The hosts need to start taking calls, though — the essence of talk radio’s success is that it makes the listeners feel like they have a voice. Janeane just said she didn’t want to talk to right-wingers on the phone when she can do that on the street, but sorry, that’s the nature of the job.
Right now as I listen, there’s an endless music break — they need better engineers on this station.
And now a snippet of Al Franken, out of context — quickly yanked and replaced by dead air. Some growing pains are to be expected, but this is not a good start.
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