One of the best things Al Franken ever did was only sign a one-year contract with Air America Radio. At the rate things are going, he’ll probably want to bail when those 365 days are up.
The upstart network is receiving predominantly bad reviews from Radio columnists and other journalists all across the country. (Just do a search at Google News to see what I mean.)
Within its first two weeks, Air America Radio managed to lose its Los Angeles and Chicago affiliates over what is alleged to have been a “bounced” check. An injunction forced the Chicago outlet, WNTD, to resume airing the network but Air America went dark on KBLA in L.A. and now, on April 30, Air America will cease to be heard on WNTD.
To reach an audience, Air America Radio must rent time from radio stations. It’s not like stations are knocking on its door begging to run their programming. Most talk stations around the country already have their pick of proven, successful, money-making syndicated hosts and shows. So, just from an economic standpoint, anything new and unproven is a hard sell.
To suggest Air America Radio has a struggle ahead of it, is to be kind.
Aside from their difficulties in maintaining a working relationship with their original Chicago and L.A. outlets, there’s the transition factor. Contrary to what some people may think, not everyone can do a radio show and authors and writers like Franken or movie stars and activists like Janeane Garofalo can’t always expect to plop down in front of a microphone and be successful.
If you don’t have training and experience in talk radio, you at least better have charisma. A perfect example of that is G. Gordon Liddy. When Liddy began his talk radio career in the early '90s, he had no experience but he did have a genuinely unique personality with just enough gumption, principles, knowledge and compelling stories from his years in politics and prison to make it work.
I'm not so sure Franken and Garofalo can emulate his example. Lucky for them they have trained radio people surrounding them whose job is to keep their respective hosts propped up and going in the right direction because sadly, they don’t have the instincts to do it themselves.
