Air America Now In 45 Markets

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Air America Now In 45 Markets
Radio’s Bush-Bashing Air America Is Back In Fighting Form
Julia Angwin and Sarah McBride
January 20, 2005

Today’s inauguration of President George W. Bush may depress many Democrats, who had hoped to take back the White House this year. But at Air America, the upstart liberal radio network, there’s at least some cause for celebration.

Coinciding with the presidential ceremonies, Air America will launch its brash Bush-bashing talk-radio format onto the airwaves in President Bush’s backyard — Washington, D.C. — as well as Detroit and Cincinnati, bringing its total nationwide reach to 45 markets.

It’s a remarkable feat for a network that was nearly given up for dead just last year. After a hype-filled launch in March, stoked by the passion of the presidential-election campaign, the network ran out of money within six weeks and was kicked off the air in Los Angeles and Chicago, leaving it with just a New York station and two smaller markets. Critics predicted the company wouldn’t recover, especially after the election ended and interest in politics faded.

But with an infusion of new financing and new management, the radio network has won high ratings in some of its local markets and has garnered the support of radio-industry giant Clear Channel Communications Inc. It has signed three-year contracts with its top two stars, Al Franken and Randi Rhodes, and raised an additional $19 million from private investors. People familiar with the situation say Air America is also finalizing a deal that would get it back on the air in Los Angeles via KXTA-AM, a Clear Channel sports station.

In fact, President Bush’s victory might be the best thing that could have happened to the network. Just as Rush Limbaugh and other conservative radio voices flourished during eight years of President Clinton, Air America’s hosts now have an inviting target for the rest of the term.

"What happened on Nov. 2 may have been bad for America but it sure was good for Air America," says Rob Glaser, chairman of Air America.

Since the election, Air America hosts have had plenty of fodder. The network has called the move to privatize Social Security "risk-based Social Security" and poked fun at the peccadilloes of Bernard Kerik during his ill-fated nomination for homeland-security chief.

This week, Mr. Franken is broadcasting from Washington, while Ms. Rhodes mocks the inaugural parade, especially the stuffed buffalo on Vice President Dick Cheney’s float. If it were up to her, she says, she would deploy a red-state float and a blue-state float, and have them bash into each other the entire length of the route.

Definitive ratings for most of Air America’s markets won’t be released until later in the month. But local market research and anecdotal evidence indicate that the network is gaining traction. On the Internet, Air America is the fourth most popular radio station, with almost 200,000 weekly Web listeners, according to Webcast Metrics. (The top rated online radio station is Digitally Imported, which offers "electronic dance music.")

In New York, Ms. Rhodes is tied with conservative Sean Hannity for the talk-show host that listeners spent the most time with each week in the fall season, according to Arbitron. Ms. Rhodes points out that she reached that level after just a few months of national exposure, and without the television show and book Mr. Hannity has to boost his public profile.

Phil Boyce, program director at Mr. Hannity’s New York home, WABC, says time spent listening is irrelevant when the audience is so small. In the afternoon time slot Ms. Rhodes and Mr. Hannity share, "he has almost four times the audience she does," says Mr. Boyce. "He crushed her."

Indeed, of the big-time political talk-show hosts, approximately 75 to 80 percent are conservative, says Michael Harrison, editor of Talkers, a magazine devoted to talk shows. And a June 1 study from Washington, D.C-based Democracy Radio reported that national and local conservative programming totaled over 40,000 hours every week, while progressive, or liberal, programming totaled just over 3,000 hours.

As it competes with the giants, a definite plus for Air America is the support from Clear Channel, which syndicates conservative talkers such as Mr. Limbaugh, Bill Handel and Laura Schlessinger through its Premiere Radio Networks. Clear Channel executives have made large donations to Republican causes, and last year the company dropped raunchy, and virulently anti-Bush, radio host Howard Stern.

When Air America was launched last April 1, Clear Channel tested it in Portland, Ore., on a poorly performing golden-oldies station, KPOJ. Results were startlingly good. Among its target audience of adults aged 25 to 54, the station moved from No. 26 to No. 3. The company started slipping in Air America programming in place of low rankers all around the country, including former sports/talk station WINZ in Miami, former nostalgia station KABL in San Francisco, and former Spanish-language station WKOX in Boston.

This week, Clear Channel is flipping three more stations to an Air America-heavy format, bringing Air America programming — Clear Channel calls it "progressive talk" — to 22 Clear Channel stations around the country. The company also made its studios in Silver Spring, Md., available for a live broadcast of Al Franken’s show on Tuesday.

While he acknowledges the warm welcome from Clear Channel, Mr. Franken says he sometimes worries the conglomerate is using Air America, "trying to get the left off their back." But he says Clear Channel’s support is also a sign of the network’s success.

If running more liberal talk is boosting Clear Channel’s reputation among liberals, "that’s a side benefit," says Gabe Hobbs, the company’s talk-radio programming chief. "We don’t make programming decisions based on political affiliations."

Smaller companies are switching to Air America, too. Last April, Mapleton Communications LLC’s KYNS in San Luis Obispo, Calif., transformed itself overnight from conservative talk to Air America. "People turned it on expecting to hear Sean Hannity, and got Al Franken instead," says station manager Nancy Leichter.

The new programming created "a lot of controversy," Ms. Leichter says. But after an initial dip in listeners and advertisers — she lost a flooring company and a landscaper — Ms. Leichter saw both numbers pick up again. By late summer, advertising revenue was running almost double what it had been under the conservative format, a pace that continues today.

Air America isn’t in the black yet, but President Jon Sinton says the network’s revenue is growing rapidly and it expects to be profitable. The radio network sells advertising spots to medium-sized and small businesses on its local affiliate stations, and it is starting to attract the eye of some larger advertisers. Gary Schonfeld, president of Jones Media, which sells Air America advertising, says the network is just reaching the critical point where it is available to 75% of the population, a key measure for big marketers.

Talkers’ Mr. Harrison says says it’s too early to call Air America a success. "When they start earning money as opposed to raising money, then we’ll know they’ve made it," he says.