[Swprograms] NYTimes.com Article: Liberal Voices (Some Sharp) Get New Home on Radio Dial

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Liberal Voices (Some Sharp) Get New Home on Radio Dial

March 31, 2004
 By JACQUES STEINBERG 



 

Lady Olivia was on the phone from Washington. 

And Sam Seder, a nighttime host on Air America Radio, the
fledgling liberal talk-radio network, had a question about
the clientele of his guest, who identified herself as a
dominatrix. 

"More Republicans or more Democrats?" Mr. Seder asked.


"Seventy-30," Lady Olivia said. 

Mr. Seder's broad grin suggested that that was precisely
the answer he had hoped for. Sitting in a windowless studio
41 floors above Midtown Manhattan during a rehearsal on
Thursday for the program, "The Majority Report," he
shuffled through a sheaf of testimonials downloaded from
Lady Olivia's Web site, operated under a different name. He
soon inquired about the identities of those Republicans,
displaying a particular interest in learning more about
"Jon from Washington," who had written, "I enjoyed the
corporal punishment more than I thought I would." 

"Does his last name," Mr. Seder asked, "rhyme with
Chriscroft?" 

The exchange yielded no information about the attorney
general of the United States. (Lady Olivia's response was
little more than a coy laugh.) But it did provide some
clues to how Air America, which makes its debut at noon
today on five stations with Al Franken, the comedian and
political satirist, at the microphone, intends to challenge
the hegemony of conservatives on commercial talk radio. 

"It needs to be entertaining, it needs to be compelling, it
needs to be laugh-out-loud funny," said Jon Sinton, a
veteran of radio who is a founder of Air America, a
subsidiary of Progress Media. "It needs to foster
water-cooler conversation. You need people to go to work
and say, `Did you hear what Franken said yesterday?' " 

"When people begin to say that," he added, "we will have
arrived." 

Beyond the satiric, sometimes sophomoric humor displayed
during the dress rehearsal for "The Majority Report," which
Mr. Seder shares with the comedian Janeane Garofalo, Air
America plans to offer a mixture of issue-oriented
interviews (with conservatives, as well as liberals),
commentary, listener phone calls and news reports,
delivered straight, at regular intervals. 

But this liberal radio network faces numerous obstacles in
capturing a substantial audience, in particular finding a
critical mass of stations that will broadcast its voices.
The network has already fallen behind in its initial goal,
announced last year, of owning five stations by the time it
went on the air. As of today it owns none. 

Instead Air America has bought programming time on stations
with moderately strong signals, but previously low ratings:
WLIB-AM in New York, WNTD-AM in Chicago, KBLA-AM in Los
Angeles, KCAA-AM in Riverside and San Bernadino, Calif.,
and KPOJ-AM in Portland, Ore. A San Francisco station is
expected to be announced in early April. 

By contrast Rush Limbaugh, whom Air America has identified
as a chief competitor, is heard on more than 600 stations,
including WABC in New York. Sean Hannity, another
conservative talk-show host, has a similar reach. 

Air America, which has raised more than $20 million, has
grand plans for buying stations, or at least all of the
broadcast time on stations, in more than a dozen cities by
year's end. Many are in Ohio, Florida and other states
considered battlegrounds in the presidential election. But
since the media ownership rules were eased in the
mid-1990's, much of the broadcast spectrum is owned by a
handful of companies. Few stations are for sale, and few
station owners will give over all of their broadcast day to
untested programming. 

Then there is the question in radio and conservative
circles whether liberals can be entertaining enough for
talk radio. 

"Sometimes they just sound so grim," said Neal Boortz, a
libertarian whose Atlanta-based program is syndicated to
more than 180 stations. "My god, the foreboding." 

Mr. Sinton said Air America needed to be wary of that
tendency. 

"The problem with really wonkish policy discussion is that
it does not attract or hold a mass audience," he said. 

As a result the network's 17-hour weekday lineup has as
much if not more in common with "Saturday Night Live" than
with National Public Radio. For example, its midmorning
show, which begins tomorrow at 9, will have as its hosts
Lizz Winstead, a comedian and a creator of "The Daily Show"
on Comedy Central, and Chuck D, the frontman for the rap
group Public Enemy. 

They will be followed at noon by Mr. Franken, the "Saturday
Night Live" alumnus who has evolved into a satirist, and
whose co-host is Katherine Lanpher from Minnesota Public
Radio. Martin Kaplan, a communications professor at the
University of Southern California, will be the host of a
one-hour show about the news media in the early evening. 

He will be followed, from 8 to 11 p.m., by Ms. Garofalo,
whose main experience in radio was playing the role of a
talk-show host for pet owners in the 1996 film "The Truth
About Cats and Dogs," and by Mr. Seder, who has worked as a
comedian, screenwriter and filmmaker. 

There were times on Thursday during the three-hour
run-through, which was recorded with the expectation of
using portions of it on actual shows, that Ms. Garofalo,
39, and Mr. Seder, 37, sounded - surprisingly - not unlike
their right-leaning competition. 

In an interview with Craig Crawford, a columnist for
Congressional Quarterly, the two hosts spent several
minutes clobbering the news media, a favorite target of Mr.
Limbaugh and Mr. Hannity. 

"It seems the journalists have really put themselves in the
center of the story in a partisan political way," Ms.
Garofalo said, speaking of what she called a new form of
participatory journalism. Moments later Mr. Seder observed,
"Really, most reporters are whores." 

And yet the content of most of the program sounded nothing
like the fare provided by Mr. Limbaugh and Mr. Hannity.
Those two popular hosts can usually be counted on to defend
President Bush - Mr. Hannity's Web site declares that he is
"fed up with all the Bush-bashing" - and whose favorite
punching bags include the president's presumed Democratic
rival, Senator John Kerry. ("Kerry injured changing
positions," Mr. Limbaugh's Web site declared.) 

Among others, Ms. Garofalo and Mr. Seder poked fun at Mr.
Bush's former spokesman Ari Fleischer ("Is he not shoveling
coal in hell now?" Mr. Seder asked); Karl Rove, the
president's senior adviser and political strategist (said
by Ms. Garofalo to be pursuing "the elusive 18-25 Klan
demo"); and Vice President Dick Cheney. (Mr. Seder said he
felt sure that he could see Mr. Cheney's hand moving Mr.
Bush's mouth on "Meet the Press" earlier this year.) 

Ms. Garofalo said that "The Majority Report," its name
inspired by a reference to Al Gore's presidential victory
in the popular vote in the 2000 election, would also
feature substantive interviews. Among the invited guests,
she said, are Ben Cohen (the activist founder of Ben &
Jerry's ice cream), Dr. Joyce Riley (an advocate of Persian
Gulf war veterans) and Howard Dean. (Ms. Garofalo was in
the audience on the night of the Iowa caucus, before he
gave what she described as his "so-called `I have a scream'
speech.") 

"It's not like we're here to say we're going to be as nasty
as right-wingers," Ms. Garofalo said in an interview. "On
the left, traditionally, you've got a nicer type of person.
You've got a person who is more willing to engage in
conversations that have context and nuance, who tend to
have more educable minds." 

Whether all of these elements can be brought together to
make great radio remains an open question. Kipper McGee,
the program director of WDBO-AM (580) in Orlando, Fla.,
which is owned by Cox Communications and carries Mr.
Hannity's syndicated program, said that Air America could
count on listeners from all bands of the political
spectrum, at least early on. 

"The old adage, `Keep your friends close and your enemies
closer,' sometimes it's true with the remote control or the
radio tuner," said Mr. McGee, who has worked in radio for
three decades. "In the final analysis, though, whether they
survive depends on how good the shows are." 

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/03/31/arts/31AIR.html?ex=1081723544&ei=1&en=7db4091c600f77dd


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