On the "death" of AAR and Liberal Talk Radio.

[dbt]

I've noticed a good bit of concern around here lately over the sad state of affairs of Air America Radio in particular and Liberal Talk Radio in general. Sadly, there ain't a hell of a lot to be done about it. In other words, "The avalanche has begun; it is too late for the pebbles to vote."

Try to take some comfort in the fact that AAR's troubles are not the direct result of Liberalism. Olbermann has shown us all that there is an audience--a big one--for viewpoints that go right up the ass of the Establishment. Sideways and without benefit of lubrication.

The problem with AAR and other Liberal entities is simple: big corporations do not understand Radio. To fit the corporate business model, Radio has been "streamlined" and sanitized and consulted into near-oblivion. Spend an hour listening to your local music station and see if you detect the tiniest spark of life or originality. Most likely, you won't--because the bean counters who run the corporations that own the stations live in Dread Fear of tuneouts. They lie awake at night, sweating BBs over the thought that some consumer, somewhere, will change the station or hit the "off" button.

That's all well and good, but they've been so busy eliminating the tuneouts that they've negelected to build any tune-ins! Their next problem is that the corporations have gotten so big that each individual station is now having a HELL of a time meeting its monthly projections. That's why a Certain Corporation is selling off a shitload of stations right now. That big entity is also worried sick over the competition from the Internets, iPods and Satellite Radio. It is sinking MILLIONS into HD Radio and online product to stem the tide of listeners who are abandoning its radio stations because they are lifeless. It cannot see this because its leadership has never spent five minutes being a DJ.

Beset by all these troubles--mostly of its own making--the Certain Corporation forged cluelessly into an unknown area: Liberal Talk. Nice try, but the whole Entity was focused on Shareholder Value. That is, short-term gain. Too bad, because the name of the game in Radio is LONG HAUL. If you want to go up against, say, the dominant station in a market, it's going to take you five years minimum to even show up in the mind of the listening public. After that, it may take you another five years (if you're lucky and REAL smart) to surpass that dominant station. Radio People know this. Bean Counters do not.

So there's the trouble that AAR faces: it just can't swim the river with the amount of chains it's carrying. And it wouldn't fare much better if it was Conservative Talk. We're just going to have to let the avalanche go to the bottom of the valley and hope that a real live OPERATOR can buy AAR.

:freak:
dbt
Remember New Orleans

[JeffR]

1. Great analysis, dbt

Radio is a sound salvation
Radio is cleanin' up the nation
They say you better listen to the voice of reason
But they don't give you any choice
'Cause they think that it's treason
So you had better do as you are told
You better listen to the radio.

- Elvis Costello

[mucifer]

2. The Young Turks said they feel very positive that they got a new

buyer. They said their concern now is that people write stations in mass to try to stop all the station buyouts. Luckily, here in Chicago we have an independent station that would get other syndicated lefty programs if AAR went under.

[papau]

3. RW billionaires subsidized Rush and others via info-commercial approach so

stations are paid to carry - with ads only a small part of the game.

We do not have such sugar daddies.

But AAR is not a group of radio stations with AAR programing that is making the radio stations fail. The radio stations with the format are not failing. The management is going for change for change's sake - sports radio, oldies, classic, top 40, whatever.

But AAR is now a proven content provider and will not go under. The format does not lose much when a 5000 watt station drops it, but it gains a lot when a 5000 watt station adopts it and finds its revenues improved.

I do not worry about AAR - indeed they had financing a few hours after they declared Chapter 11 - and I expect them to emerge from Chapter 11 stronger than ever.