« March 2006 | Main | May 2006 »
April 30, 2006
Mike Malloy hosts "impeachment forum" in Sacramento
Drats! It looks like I - and almost everyone else - missed Mike Malloy's "Impeachment, Dialogue, Debate and Action" forum in Sacramento on Saturday. He was in town to broadcast from Air America's KCTC station, then:Sponsored by the Progressive Caucus of the California Democratic Party, this impeachment forum coincides with the State Democratic Convention being held in Sacramento, April 28th through the 30th. The purpose of the forum is educate the public and to put pressure on the Party Leadership to sign-on to the impeachment resolution introduced by Representative John Conyers.One of the stars of the Progressive Caucus is the odious Jackie Goldberg, who in her youth was a member of the Policy Committee for a World Communist Youth Festival.
Confirmed panelists include California Representative Maxine Waters, Bill Goodman and Shane Kadidal from the Center for Constitutional Rights, and Betsy de la Vega, former chief federal prosecutor of the City of San Jose, and author of an upcoming book on impeachment. In addition, invited to appear on the panel are Laurence Tribe, Representative John Conyers Jr. and David Swanson, founder of afterdowningstreet.org.
Related: Mad Mikey "cleverly" announces the forum in the post "Chimpeach!" And, not related to the forum there's the same video of some kind of appearance he made on CNN at these two links: media.putfile.com/Mike-Malloy-on-CNN server4.whiterosesociety.org/content/malloy/Mike_Malloy_on_CNN_4-22-06.mp3
Posted in MikeWho at 11:34 PM | Comments (1)
April 28, 2006
Bill Clinton to bless Sheldon Drobny's KXDE Little Rock
Arianna Huffington and/or her censoring web minions have finally gotten radio loony Sheldon Drobny to stop using ALL CAPS in the titles of his posts at her site: "Drobnys Nova M Radio Starts Broadcasting Air America In Little Rock". Next step: Introduction to Punctuation.
Air America radio will begin broadcasting in Central Arkansas on Monday with appearances by former president Bill Clinton and retired general Wesley Clark. The national network broadcast will be carried by Little Rock-based KXDE 1380am, which Nova M Radio recently acquired through LMA with an option to purchase. "We're about giving people another voice to hear," said Nova M's president and CEO Anita Drobny in a telephone interview today. "We want people to digest, compare, discuss, and have an open forum..." ...The Arkansas station will be close to the 100th Air America affiliate nationwide, and Drobny calls the network's expansion "the biggest rollout of a network since CNN."
On a non-serious note, which alternate universe are they communicating to us from? On a serious note, is this the first direct link between Bubba and Air America and the Drobnys?
UPDATE: Based on the locations of the transmitters for AAR's "Chicago" and "San Antonio" stations, is it too much to ask whether KXDE is in fact located in the city limits of Little Rock? Could it be the Station From Hope? Or, perhaps, Hot Springs?
Posted in Meta at 12:22 AM | Comments (7)
April 26, 2006
Drudge's outright lies about WLIB listenership
Internet gossip columnist Matt Drudge - if you can believe anything he writes - has the details on the Arbitron Winter Book:Among all listeners 12+, it was a race to the bottom for AIR AMERICA and WLIB as mid-days went from a 1.6 share during winter 2005 to a 1.0 share winter 2006.What this yellow "journalist" fails to mention is that those in NYC are the savviest media consumers in the world. While the over-the-air broadcasts might not be surging ahead as they have in the past, podcasts and other downloads are surging ahead so fast that AAR has had to buy dozens of new servers.
During PM drive, host Randi Rhodes plunged to 27,900 listeners every quarter hour, finishing 25th place in her time slot, down from 60,900 listeners every quarter hour in the fall.
Plus, the demos are better, and listeners trust AIR AMERICA to give them the real truth on issues and the Bush presidency.
UPDATE: The ratings are here. For the last five quarters: 1.2 1.0 1.2 1.4 0.8
The last quarter puts them in 27th place in the NYC market. Of course, that's the quarter where their downloads of podcasts exploded, so don't worry about that number so much. What matters is the quality of AAR's material, and their efforts to get the truth out there.
Note also that there are no less than eleven (11!) stations with lower ratings! Including none other than WBBR, which is owned by NYC mayor - and staunch conservative Rethuglican - "Mayor Mike" Bloomberg! And, AAR is ahead of three stations from Barnstable Broadcasting! And, as Randi Rhodes pointed out last night, podcast production was up 43% last quarter!
Posted in Meta at 11:20 AM | Comments (5)
April 24, 2006
Has WHLD sold out the public trust?
WHLD is Air America Radio's newest outlet in Buffalo (New York), and they accept ads from highly questionable groups. Instead of, for instance, ads from Sprouts (the co-op on 3rd) or the Whole Earth Gardening and Grow Lights Center on 5th or Bud's Birkenstock on 7th or Vern's Volvos on Frostbitten Way, they accept... pro-casino ads!BuffaloPundit responds to the claims that AAR has sold out the community and the people here.
In other news, by the time you read this a special guest will have made an appearance:
"In promoting Al Franken, we basically just opened the lines for calls, and we would have exhausted our whole supply of tickets in 24 hours," Marks says. "The phones wouldn't stop, so we realized we had to do a contest instead and give away two at a time. And still, the calls just keep coming until we tell them we've got a winner. They're calling from everywhere - East Otto, Gowanda, Erie, Pa."If you lived in Buffalo that would be "everywhere". And, as with other AAR stations, there's a bit of an "issue":
Although its 5,000 watts don't stack up to the 50,000 watts at WWKB, many other local stations - WGR and WBEN, to name two - have 5,000-watt daytime power. But where WHLD runs into a problem is direction.Since whenever I hear Buffalo all I can think about is the nearby Jamestown and how maddeningly beautiful Natalie Merchant is, how about a picture to wash all thoughts of AAR from our collective minds?
"It's a weird signal," says Brown-Cashdollar. "It doesn't always go wide in Erie County, but it goes up to Brockport, it reaches through Toronto, and it goes right down the coast of Lake Erie as strong as can be."
Marc Odien, webmaster of WNYmedia.net, says, "Even now, WHLD isn't the easiest thing to get up here in the Northtowns."
That's much better.
Posted in Meta at 03:29 AM | Comments (0)
April 23, 2006
Jackie Guerra is Workin' It
Jackie Guerra - a stand-up comic/model/actress/TV personality/actress/author/motivational speaker/political activist/jewelry artist/former union organizer/Latina/comedienne/dilettante who flits from project to project/movie star/radio personality/good dancer - hosts Air America Radio's first show that explicitly calls for a socialistic revolution in the United States. A former member of the October 17 Revolutionary Guards of the Revolutionary Communist Party, Jackie brings her class consciousness and call for radical change to AAR's airwaves from Karnes TX to Crystal Lake IL every Saturday from 2-3pm. The future will be electrified, comrade.
Posted in AlsoRans at 11:03 PM | Comments (0)
April 18, 2006
Al Franken comedy weekend include socialism, laughs, fun!
Air America candidate/host Al Franken and Vermont's "Independent" candidate for Senate Bernie Sanders invite you to join them at a "Weekend at Bernies!" (tag line: And unlike the other "Weekend," this one is LIVE!)
Bernie and Al will headline a night of comedy and progressive politics at the Flynn Theatre in beautiful Burlington on Saturday, April 29. And the Sanders for Senate campaign is giving away an all-expenses-paid trip for two to the show from anywhere in the lower 48.
Here are the rules:
All you need to do to enter is send us your name and e-mail address and, if you'd like, the names and e-mail addresses of friends who you think might want to help Bernie build a national progressive movement.
I did enter, but I want to make it clear that I did not enter the names of anyone else into the form. I would also like to make it clear to the Commission that I am not now nor have I ever been a member of a national progressive movement. I just want a chance at jeering Al Franken from the front row.
Posted in StuartSmalley at 09:37 AM | Comments (4)
April 17, 2006
Janeane Garofalo: clear and purified!
[In order to avoid getting a snake or a letter from a snake in my mailbox, I'm going to change some letters in the following.]From "Radio host Janeanne Garofalo played by Sc|entol0gy?"
Air America Radio talk show host Janeanne Garofalo of "Majority Report" was seemingly taken in by a Sc|entol0gy-linked project selling a "detoxification" cure invented by the church's founder L. Ron Hiibbard...
Apparently, Garofalo either didn't understand or didn't care about the often-reported links between the privately-funded "New York Rescue W0rkers Det0xification Project" touted on her Friday night show and Sc|ent0logy.
The so-called "Purif|cation Rundown," which is a Sc|ent0logy religious ritual, is at the heart of the program. Hiibbard invented the process, which includes large dosing of niacin, sweating in a sauna and ingesting cooking oil...
...The usually sharp, well informed and at times cynical Garofalo is typically more skeptical. But she did the Friday night show without her Internet savvy researcher/wingman Sam Seder.
CultNews has witnessed firsthand as a guest on "Majority Report" how this team works with Seder hovering over his laptop grabbing information through the Internet while Garofalo gets in the zingers.
...Janeanne Garofalo's guest was Sc|entol0gist Leah Remini, star of "King of Queens," a supporter of the New York detox project...
Posted in Janeane at 11:41 PM | Comments (1)
April 05, 2006
Ann Coulter won Al Franken debate
I'm going to guess that Al Franken got his arse kicked in the recent debate with Ann Coulter, based only on his side of the story. If Al had won the debate, I'm sure there would have been a bit more triumphalism from ever-classy Al.UPDATE: A supposed first-hand account of what went on backstage before the debate from Ann Coulter's bodyguard:
Since none of that was true, Coulter told the rabbis she NOW wanted to go first. Franken threw a temper tantrum, leaping from his chair and screaming that he HAD to go first.
...Franken crazily screamed for a good ten minutes, repeatedly leaping from his chair and screaming that he HAD to go first. Franken's wife also piped in that he should go first.
Coulter was calm and remained seated throughout Franken's hysterics, but when asked by the rabbis if it was okay with her that Franken went first she again said, no, she wanted to speak first.
Things were going nowhere since both of them wanted to go first, so one rabbi suggested a coin toss, but Franken again leapt from his chair screaming "NO COIN TOSS! I'M GOING FIRST!" he said he was going first and he'd clear up during his presentation that Coulter hadn't been a b----...
Posted in StuartSmalley at 08:28 PM | Comments (8)
Danny Goldberg leaving Air America Radio
At least according to this.
P.S. Extra special bonus note to AAR insiders: this site pays cash for tips. That goes for the housekeepers, groundskeepers, greenskeepers, and upstairs maids of AAR insiders too. Se habla espanol.
Posted in Meta at 11:04 AM | Comments (0)
David Brock, Al Franken, AAR demand "fair shake"
WASHINGTON, April 5 /U.S. Newswire/ -- Today, Media Matters for America will host an all-star panel discussion on progressive voices and the media. The forum, held in conjunction with Air America Radio's second anniversary, will address questions about balance in news coverage and what consumers of news can do to ensure accurate and reliable reporting. The panelists will seek to highlight -- and propose solutions to -- the narrow spectrum of opinion represented in the media, where liberal and progressive voices are often excluded from the public debate.It continues:
The event -- "Why Media Matters - Progressive Voices and the Media" -- will feature David Brock, Media Matters for America president and CEO; Eleanor Clift, Newsweek contributing editor; Al Franken, host of Air America Radio's The Al Franken Show; and Helen Thomas, Hearst Newspapers syndicated columnist.
"With insight and humor from an incredible array of panelists, this forum will spotlight and discuss the systematic underrepresentation of progressive voices in the media," Brock said. "Make no mistake: Conservatives dominate the news media, and forums like this make clear that progressive voices are willing to step up to the plate if just given a fair shake."
"Air America Radio is on almost 100 stations across the U.S., and we continue to gain listeners month after month. Our ratings are surging ahead in Portland OR as well as other unspecified locations", AAR CEO Danny Golberg says.
"Despite the Bush Crime Family driving around my neighborhood in Atlanta and jamming our transmitters, we continue to get the truth out to the people," according to AAR overnight host "Mad" Mike Malloy.
"Look, you people. All we're asking for is a fair shake. The media is heavily biased against us. For instance, the New York Times has only given us free advertising dozens of times since our founding. Let's leave that minor Gloria Wise scandal in our past, and 'progress' as I continue to consider whether to run for Senate. In fact, we wouldn't have had to take money from a Boys & Girls Club if the federal government would only help us spread our message without having to constantly worry about our bottom line. Visit Franken for Senate! as I continue to consider whether I'm running!" a contrite Al Franken remarked.
Posted in Meta at 10:54 AM | Comments (1)
