WHAT's down? Air America canceled in Philly

WHAT AM 1340 in Philadelphia is stopping their broadcasts of Air America Radio's Al Franken and Randi Rhodes tomorrow. Those are the only two AAR shows they broadcast; Philly is spared, for instance, Mike Malloy.

As previously discussed, WHAT's ratings didn't even make the charts.

The main reason appears to be that those two "liberals" weren't "down":

WHAT aired Air America's programming from noon to 7 p.m. weekdays, sandwiched between the rest of its lineup. The juxtaposition of liberal talk and WHAT's African America-targeted talk programming seemed an odd fit from the start.

We have received unconfirmed rumors that Al Franken was considering doing a live broadcast dressed in a dashiki in a last desperate move to gain listeners. That could not be confirmed - or denied - at post time.

AAR was on the station for a year, and their general manager Kernie Anderson says:

"things were not working out"

An AAR spokeshole says:

"While we hate to lose affiliates, it is very common to add and drop affiliates due to local market conditions. While we hate to lose WHAT-AM, we are currently in negotiations with another station and hope to make that announcement soon."

Philly is a nice city, except you have to drive for miles and miles and miles to find any kind of elevation gain. I know, I tried. And, it's not as liberal as, say, NYC. Despite that flatness and lack of wall-to-wall liberalism, if they can't get listeners there on one station they're probably going to have little luck on another station.

UPDATE: This says they're being replaced by "a 1-to-5 p.m. call-in show for Philadelphia Daily News columnist Elmer Smith."

Posted in Meta at September 29, 2005 02:24 PM

Comments

Just a heads-up for you, your google ads are linking to a lot of anti-war stuff. Is this what you had in mind? Go take a look for yourself.

Posted by: Thew at September 29, 2005 05:13 PM

I thought it would matter that AAR was canceled in Philadelphia, but, c'mon, those guys on Philly ghetto radio? Why not have "Fresh Air", or "Earth & Sky"? AAR failing on a low power negro staion means nothing, except air america doesn't have local ghetto appeal.

Oh, yeah, go take a shit, you retard.

Posted by: otis at October 13, 2005 09:02 PM