This is an article Alex Bennett wrote for Hustler Magazine in 2006. While few things have changed most of it still holds up. At the end there is an update. The piece was edited by Bruce David.
David Bernstein is that rare breed in the radio business, the kind of person no one speaks bad of.
I got to know him when I was looking for work several years back. He was one of the many radio program directors I hit up for a job. A friendship developed between us.
He had been the program director for seven years at WOR, one of the country's top talk stations. When they let him go, we commiserated about being unemployed. I finally found work at Sirius Satellite Radio and David eventually found work at Air America, the floundering liberal talk network. Those who knew him couldn't have been happier. Who better to save Air America than David?
Every month or so we'd have lunch. It was in this setting that he looked across the table at me one day to say “It's all over. They're going to pull the plug!”
Could this be the end of the “great liberal hope”?
The history of Air America Radio is one of the biggest roller coaster rides in the modern radio history.
The story begins in 2000 with the firing of one of the few liberal talk show hosts in the country, Mike Malloy, from WLS in Chicago. It turned out Malloy had some great fans, including Sheldon and Anita Drobny, Chicago millionaires who wanted to see him syndicated.
There was a problem though. One reason for the proliferation of conservative talk shows was the prevailing theory of “format purity,” a dogma pushed by the top talk radio chain in the country, Clear Channel. Gabe Hobbs, their director of talk programming declared that a talk station had to be either all conservative or all progressive. “you wouldn't put a soul record on a country station,” he’s quoted as saying, “so why put a liberal talk show on a conservative talk station?”
He was dead wrong about format purity. For years the two points of view mixed it up on talk radio everywhere, to great success. This worked in part because liberals, with their open minds, would listen to a conservative, but the reverse wasn't true. Hence, larger audience numbers for the Limbaughs of the world. Some suspected that Hobb’s philosophy was really just an excuse to keep liberal thought off airwaves controlled by conservative companies.
The Drobney’s were sold the notion of 24/7 liberal radio format by Jon Sinton, whom they hired as CEO of the newly formed AnShell Media. Then they enlisted Dave Logan, a good veteran programmer. Cash poor, the enterprise was eventually sold to millionaire Evan Cohen an established (or so it seemed) money raiser and Rex Sorenson a broadcaster from Hawaii. Sinton and Logan went along and Air America was born with Progress Media as the new parent company. That was probably their first mistake; giving their new network the same name as a famous CIA owned covert airline in Southeast Asia during and after the Vietnam War.
Radio is like no other medium. It is long form (usually three hours), adlib, live, five days a week and audio only. The immediacy of the medium is unlike any other in show business. That's why you hire people who know how to do it. Air America, however, did not do that. It was their next big mistake.
Look at the lineup they first went on the air with. Their morning show was anchored by a rather mediocre stand-up comic, Marc Maron. Sam Kinison so despised Maron that he peed all over the guy’s bed at the Comedy Store digs in Hollywood. Maron’s only radio credential: he was a regular guest on my program in San Francisco for several years.
Mid mornings featured Chuck D, a politically savvy hip-hop artist. Radio experience zero. Teamed with him was a good comedian, Liz Winstead, who had created the “Daily Show,” leaving it when Jon Stewart came on board. Aside from co-hosting with Chuck D, she was named AA's VP of entertainment programming. A nice person but again, no radio cred.
Then there was Janeane Garafalo, actress, comedian, activist… no radio experience. Windstead wisely teamed Garafalo with Sam Seder who was a radio guy. Too bad they didn't get along.
The only real broadcast veteran with a proven track record was Randi Rhodes. She was a solid performer and ratings getter but, it is said, a terror to work with.
The big get, or so they thought, was Al Franken. Yes, the guy on Saturday Night Live who wrote those books bashing talk show hosts. He was OK performing for a 5-minute sketch once a week or taking a year to write a book, but this was radio. He brought a staff of producers and support people that were hated by the rest of AA’s employees because they insisted on calling themselves “Team Franken.” He took away a reported 2 million dollars a year plus the cost of his staff.
Oh, yeah. There was also the ten comedy writers who wrote for all the other shows. No radio station has done that since the 40's. The seeds for disaster had been planted. All that was left was to thrust this concoction on the American liberal public.
I know of no other radio operation getting the send-off AA did. Publicity abounded, the crown jewel being a New York Times Magazine cover with Franken's larger than life face plastered on it.
Air American launched March 31, 2004 with 6 stations. They had leased station WLIB in New York, WNTD in Chicago, WMNN in Minneapolis, KTLA in Los Angeles and KCLA in California’s Inland Empire.
Just two weeks after the debut, the first glitch appeared. The Chicago and Los Angeles stations were paid with a check for a cool million that bounced. Chicago and Los Angeles pulled the AA programming off the air. AA claimed it was a mix up. Not impressed, a judge ordered them to pay the owner $250,000. Even worse they remained off the air in both cities. AA never paid the court ordered sum.
Four weeks into this folly CEO Mark Walsh and VP for programming Dave Logan were dumped. Five weeks in, Evan Cohen and partner Rex Sorenson were forced out. Among other things Cohen claimed on launch they had raised 30 million when they’d only raised six. At this point a new company, Piquant LLC, was formed with new head, Rob Glaser, the mastermind behind Real Networks, the Internet streaming people. In little more than a year Air America had changed hands 3 times.
The biggest AA scandal involved the Gloria Wise Boys and Girls Club of Co-Op City in the Bronx. They gave an $875,000 loan to Progress Media, Air America’s owner at the time. This would have raised eyebrows even if the Director of Development for Gloria Wise hadn’t been none other than the aforementioned Evan Cohen.
As a result of the expose, the city of New York severed it’s association with The Boys and Girls Clubs of America. The new AA owners disclaimed any liability in the matter but Glaser said it was only right to pay back the loan. You can imagine how this all played in the press. It made AA look like crooks who stole from little kids.
Things were not all doom and gloom. Out on the west coast VP Ed Krampf at Clear Channel (remember them, the right wing company?) decided he would try the format on a moribund station they had in Portland, Oregon. The station zoomed to the top of the talk show market.
This inspired Clear Channel. Many of their markets had “dog signals,” stations that were low power or at a bad spot on the dial. Throw AA on those stations; get the programming free while at the same time deflecting criticism about a perceived political bias. It was a win-win formula repeated in market after market.
Before they knew it, AA was heard on over 100 stations. Hopes were high until someone realized they weren't getting good ratings anywhere and even Portland was going limp. The reason? Dull programming that had, with the exception of Randi Rhodes, a total lack of entertainment value. Wait a minute -- isn't Franken an entertainer? Maybe, but he sure wasn't entertaining at AA. His dull, droning voice didn't lend itself to radio. Garafalo had similar problems; her style didn't cut across the airwaves. Plus, there was the contentious relationship with her co-host. I'll say it again…. They weren't radio people.
A year passed before the next big mistake, the appointment of Danny Goldberg as CEO. Goldberg was a left thinking former music business executive. What did he know about radio? Do you have a thimble? He lasted little more than a year, just long enough to further drag down the operation with firings that imposed his taste and pissed off the staff.
Eventually several other execs left including Jon Sinton who was with the project since the Drobny days. This was a company in turmoil.
In July 2006, Garafalo threw in the towel. Eventually Al Franken left to run for the U.S. Senate seat from Minnesota. Franken was replaced by a liberal stalwart, Thom Hartmann who had been syndicated by AA but not on the network itself. He, at least, had a track record in radio.
You may recall the whole idea of a liberal network started with a desire to find a home for Mike Malloy, one of the most outspoken left wing commentators. Although brought into the AA fold, at the end of August 2006, he was fired among much dissent from the staff and listeners who signed a petition with 17,000 signatures. To this day no reason has been given.
October 15th, 2006, AA filed for Bankruptcy. They owed over 20 million dollars.
Enter Stephen L. Green, a multi billionaire real estate magnate and his brother Mark Green, a political activist, author and lawyer who ran for Mayor of New York in 2001. (He lost the nomination to Michael Bloomberg.) Mark, the liberal, begged brother Stephen, rumored to be a conservative, to buy out the assets of Air America including its already tarnished name. In March of 2007, the deal was completed. The Green's announced the beginning of Air America 2.0.
The lineup was revamped. Since September of 2006, mornings have been filled with a program called “The Young Turks” hosted by Cenk Uygur who created the program (prior to it being on AA) with Ben Mankiewicz. Ben left before the AA move, going to TMZ, a gossip website. This was too bad for the show because Ben was the only good thing about the Turks. The one time I worked with Uygur I wasn't able to get a word in edgewise; he wouldn't shut up for 5 seconds. No wonder Ben left. The AA show, an ego vehicle for Uygur, is terrible.
A good hire at this point was Thom Hartmann. He had been doing this sort of radio for years, the last few for Air America Syndication but not the actual network. Thom is a very knowledgeable guy. His only problem is a some what professorial delivery. Not exciting radio, but smart and intelligent.
One of the few who impressed from the first sign-on was Randi Rhodes. She has the greatest possibility of success in syndication. She is, however, an 800-pound gorilla, throwing her weight around, forcing management to put out one fire after another. One big example was a recent incident outside a New York City bar where she fell to the ground, broke two teeth and bruised her face. At first it was reported that she had been assaulted while walking her dog. Then a misguided host at AA, Jon Elliot, irresponsibly reported the assailants were right-wingers. When the dust cleared, Randi had a different story: she had been in the bar, walked outside and, the next thing she knew, she was on the pavement. “Maybe I was pushed,” she added. With three days to flesh out the story, that was all she could come up with. Most people feel she got really shit faced and collapsed.
Another holdover from the early days is Rachel Maddow. Rachel is supposedly a very nice, intelligent woman, a Rhodes scholar in fact. Her biggest problem, I am told, is that she scripts her entire 2-hour show. This is unheard of in a live medium that thrives on spontaneity. She belongs on a non-commercial NPR type station.
Shortly after the Green's took over, they hired my friend David Bernstein. He brought in an old hire from WOR in New York City. The singularly named host Lionel is a funny, sharp radio guy. He is probably the most commercially viable of the AA hosts. There is just one problem; he's not a liberal. He is a middle of the road type, sometimes leaning left, sometimes right. Not exactly a good fit for Air America.
So where do you sell this bouillabaisse of a broadcast day? At its height AA had over 100 affiliates. Today there are around 60. It's hard to get an exact count because stations are dropping them all the time while others are taking just the shows they want.
Under David Bernstein there was a move to get away from the 24/7 concept by selling shows individually. Randi Rhodes and Thom Hartmann are quite syndicatable. Lionel, on the other hand, had to clear stations at the same time as the more popular Ed Schultz. After the takeover by the Green family, Westwood One took over distribution, but they still kept on losing stations.
The big fly in AA's ointment is that, since it’s inception, more liberal talk show hosts have come to the forefront. There's the politically funny Stephanie Miller, Washington insider Bill Press, conspiracy firebrand Mike Malloy (the man for whom the Drobney's created a talk network in the first place) and finally Ed Schultz, whose overbearing “How would Rush Limbaugh sound if he was a liberal?” style has garnered him a decent size audience, albeit smaller than he claims. There are enough entertaining liberal programs to fill a whole day without once having to tap any of AA's shows. So who needs them?
This brings me back to my lunch with David Bernstein. He was certain Stephen Green was going to pull the plug on Air America. I felt bad for David. While he’d entered into this with eyes open, there was always the hope he could turn the place around. But the powers that be resisted his ideas. Getting anything to change seemed impossible. Air America 2.0 was just a slogan. Nothing had changed but the players.
What went wrong on this strange, curious journey? Just about everything. People were put in charge who didn't know a thing about radio. People were put on the air who, for the most part, didn't know how to work the medium. The few who did were shunted into the background. And the people running the finances couldn't be trusted.
The worst mistake was taking the whole thing too seriously; they had lofty, high-minded ideals, when all they should have cared about was putting on a great, entertaining show that they could be proud of.
What pisses me off about the whole misadventure is that everyone in the radio business was looking and waiting for them to fail. When they did, it became more difficult for people like myself, a left wing talker, to prove that liberal talk can work. Everyone just points to the failure of AA.
AA also let down the liberal audience expecting a radio messiah to lead them out of the neo-con Desert. These people were thirsty and all got was salt.
It turned out David was wrong. They didn't axe the network, they axed David, citing cutbacks. This from the network that once paid Al Franken 2 million dollars a year.
When I talked to David after his firing he thought Air America only had a couple of months left at best. That means when you read this it may already be gone. If Air America isn't gone, then somebody please put a bullet in it's head to end the suffering!
Update: Air America is still in business but has changed hands yet one more time. Randi Rhodes up and left to go work with Mike Malloy over at NovaM Radio owned by Sheldon Drobney. Rachel Maddow became a success over at MSNBC, but her radio show still sucks. Thom Hartmann now remains the biggest star they have and deservedly so. I'm still amazed that they are still in business.
