It is with a touch of schadenfreude to deliver this news today. Air America Radio goes bankrupt, again.
Getting yet one more chance to learn the hard way how business economics works, for a lack of advertising support, they’ve just run out of ‘investors’ to keep them afloat.
There’s one thing about Liberals on a mission to compete with radio talkers on the Right. They refuse to learn from their mistakes. Watch for a new Liberal Progressive station, LP Radio for short, on a short wave frequency near you.
“The very difficult economic environment has had a significant impact on Air America’s business. This past year has seen a `perfect storm’ in the media industry generally,” the company said in a statement on its Web site.
The New York-based network said its “painstaking search for new investors” came close to succeeding even this week, “but ultimately fell short.”
Updated 1/24/2010
link: Air America Radio Closing, Filing for Bankruptcy | Pensacola News Journal story
For AAR, it’s been that way from the start. They’ve been through a couple bankruptcies and re-organizations in their short history, continually looking for new investors until advertising would eventually make their investment pay off. Never happened for them.
During their life-span, they (progressive radio) operated on sliming and name calling their competition, and generally skirting around the issues. And when that didn’t get them advertisers, they organized campaigns to threaten the advertisers of their competition, who did have advertisers. It was that tactic, trying to take out the competition instead of trying to persuade a new audience, that sealed their fate. And that’s the way it was for them from day one. Overall, it’s more like mud wrestling than a business plan.
That second quote is very revealing. Do you think Rush Limbaugh seeks “new investors?” No, the name of the game is advertising!
To get sponsors you need to provide value to the listeners. Who wants to listen to Janeane Garofalo or Al Frankin? There isn’t an ounce logic in any of their arguments. It’s the same reason I can’t stand listening to Sean Hannity. Luckily for Sean, most of the people that listen to talk radio are aligned with his viewpoint.