Air America Radio

Many of you may have heard that Air America Radio (a left-wing enterprise) is failing.  This has led to calls to reinstate the FCC's "Fairness" Doctrine.  It seems liberals don't like the fact that the marketplace of information and ideas has rendered their worldview as wanting...so, they aim to make the choice for you and call it "fair."  Need proof?

Democracy Project has a great post that links to a column by Brian C Anderson in the LAT.  The LAT is a liberal paper and this is what the column has to say:

Unable to prosper in the medium, liberals have taken to denouncing talk radio as a threat to democracy. Liberal political columnist Hendrik Hertzberg, writing in the New Yorker, is typically venomous. Conservative talk radio represents "vicious, untreated political sewage" and "niche entertainment for the spiritually unattractive," Hertzberg sneers.

If some liberals had their way, Congress would regulate political talk radio out of existence. Their logic is that scrapping Air America would be no loss if it also meant getting Limbaugh and Sean Hannity and Bennett off the air.

To accomplish this, New York Democratic Rep. Maurice D. Hinchey has proposed reviving the Fairness Doctrine to protect "diversity of view," and John Kerry recently sent out some signals that he too thought that might be a good idea.

Under the old Fairness Doctrine, phased out by Ronald Reagan's FCC in the late '80s, any station that broadcast a political opinion had to give equal time to opposing views. A station running, say, Hannity's show, would also have to broadcast a left-wing competitor, even if it had no listeners.

It seems liberals can't stand it when their ideas and worldview is rejected in the marketplace of information and ideas.  Why do they suffer?  Here is what Anderson has to say:

So why do liberals fare so poorly on air? Some on the left say it's because liberals are, well, smarter and can't convey their sophisticated ideas to the rubes who listen to talk radio. Former New York Gov. Mario Cuomo, whose own stint as a talk-show host was a ratings disaster, gave canonical expression to this self-serving view. Conservatives "write their messages with crayons," he maintained. "We use fine-point quills."

Who cares? 

Here is what Democracy Project has to say:

Conservative elites aside, it's the conservative base that makes up the bulk of take radio's audience. And these folks, after all, are always the target of the liberal elite's scorn. It's the latter who cling to the hope that they're the natural aristocracy. Born superior, they should rule by default. It's this sense of privilege that, in their eyes at least, allows them to substitute attitude for argument, posturing for thinking. Put simply: any movement whose intellectual elite includes Michael Moore and Jimmy Carter is in deep trouble precisely because of its shallow nature.

Mark Tapscott offers this gem:

Put another way, it's hard to get folks to follow you when you keep telling them how stupid they are for following somebody else.

Is anybody in the MSM/DNC paying attention?

Anderson finishes his column with the following:

Sure, talk radio is partisan, sometimes overheated. But it's also a source of argument and information. Together with Fox News and the blogosphere, it has given the right a chance to break through the liberal monoculture and be heard. For that, anyone who supports spirited public debate should be grateful.

Air Force Voices agrees...we should be grateful and seek to protect the First Amendment and let the marketplace decide what to listen to. 

UPDATE:  Michelle Malkin asks the question more directly: Why does Air America Suck?

Comments

[liz]

i agree, air america is a waste of perfectly good radio waves. they wanted to interview my husband when he got home from iraq. after a little research we discovered their anti-america antics and we refused. they didnt like that, got pretty darn snotty about it too.

~liz