On March 31, Progress Media, a company
headed by former AOL executive Mark Walsh, launched
Air America Radio. By the next day, they looked like
April Fools.
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The launch got great press
coverage — stories all over national and local
news broadcasts, in newspapers, and on the Internet.
Hosts like Al Franken, Janeane Garofolo and Chuck D
were able to use their celebrity for further press attention,
goading conservative archenemies Bill O’Reilly
and Rush Limbaugh to speak ill against the new network.
Theoretically, all of this publicity would convert
to listenership, but unless you happen to live in one
of the five cities where the network owns stations (New
York, Minneapolis, Los Angeles, Chicago or Portland)
you will be unable to tune in on the radio. Hmmmm, where
else could a station with liberal talk shows find some
listeners?
How about, I don’t know... the INTERNET?
If the network had taken a page from the huge success
of recent liberal ventures, they would have made sure
the rest of the country knew where to tune in: www.airamericaradio.com.
References are easy to come by. See: Dean for America,
MoveOn.org, TrueMajority, Working Assets and more. In
the past few years the enormous success of liberal causes
online has proven that while conservatives own the low-frequency
radio waves, liberals own the high-bandwith e-waves.
John Kerry got the memo. His campaign rolled out e-mails
from such Democratic heavyweights as Bill and Hillary
Clinton, James Carville, and countless others to help
them raise more than $10 million on the Internet during
the closing weeks of the first quarter, proving that
liberals are alive, well and donating online.
By largely ignoring the online potential, the network
is forced to rely on liberal faithfuls in the five cities,
or eager techno-savvy progressives who seek out the
radio stream. Oh, did I forget to mention that the network
is streaming online? Yeah, well, SO DID THEY!
So why didn't Air America try to establish itself on
the Internet as well as on the radio? Well, it might
have tried, but the effort was pitiful. If you were
motivated enough to seek out the Web site on your own,
you would have found a hollow page with a few short
sentences about how the station was now broadcasting,
along with a link to “listen live.” Tantalizing,
to be sure. If you tried to listen live, it was kind
of like listening to a bad DJ or a trucker on a broken
ham radio — I couldn’t tell Al Franken from
Al Gore.
The site is much better now than it was when the network
started broadcasting, but making sure its Web site was
ready should have been a principle aspect of its launch.
If the network got it together enough to coordinate
its off-line media blitz with an online campaign, it
could have relied and built on the foundation that other
online enterprises have begun. It could have attracted
numerous listeners outside of the current five-city
broadcasting radius. It could have turned this launch
into a momentous groundbreaking event across the nation,
instead of just a media sideshow for 12 hours. It could
have, and it should have, but it didn’t.
Joe
Chard is a freelance writer and regular contributor
to Raw Story. When not ranting against whomever pisses
him off this week, Mr. Chard works in non-profit internet
development and online fundraising.
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