The grand experiment that is Air America has ended.
As a liberal-minded person, I was glad to hear that an alternative to Limbaugh and the Fox News crew was finally being aired, even though I never listened to it. Well, I listened to it once a few years ago, but that was it.
Obviously, many of the stations problems could be attributed to bad management, but the undeniable truth is that they never brought in the listeners, and it is about this that I am ambivalent.
I don't know whether I'm sad, because idiots like Rush Limbaugh bring in millions of listeners, or whether I'm happy because the very people that Air America was targeting don't need constant validation; they don't need constant support.
In much the same way as religion, when you're as ideological as Fox News is and Rush Limbaugh is, you need frequent support for your beliefs. Just look at religion. They hang around with people who agree. Discussing things everyone agrees on. And, verily, try to kill people who don't agree. Obviously, the whole killing thing is waning in Western culture, but you still have evangelicals and people who go door-to-door trying to convince other people. Because when your view is built around little to no reason, the only way you can feel confident is if you have shit in which you already believe spouted back in your face daily.
Because Air American wasn't merely targeting the devoutly liberal, which is a market that is, if not equally as retarded, then close to the Fox News demographic, they found a small audience. They were targeting the intellectual, the unbiased, and the educated. I guess they could have gone super-left, bashing business, government, and evil capitalists, but being super-left while also being a for-profit radio station just seems counterproductive.
So I don't know whether to be sad or happy. Boo, it went out of business. Yay, we never needed it in the first place. Ah well. We can always read Mother Jones.
Liberal talk-radio network Air America crashes (LATimes.com)
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