Not Your Sweetie

Air America
LowerManhattanite (67 posts) Tue May-25-04 10:56 PM
Response to Reply #93
106. I work for WBAI-FM (Pacifica) in NY...Edited on Tue May-25-04 11:11 PM by LowerManhattanite
...and previously for Inner City Broadcasting ( ICBC-the license holder for the WLIB 1190 AM/WBLS 107.5 FM frequencies), so I feel I can speak on this with a certain level of authority...
Air America is fine. The payroll issue is a long-standing one with ICBC. Air America is run out of the old 33rd ICBC/ WLIB floor studios which were heavily renovated (by broadcast engineer friends of mine). They went from analog with a few CD players to a full digital format using NO tape. This quick switch (done in a span of three weeks--amazingly fast!) took place with almost NO shakedown/test-run of the equipment. Thus, the occasionally choppy air sound. They lost a major sponsor in GM when a vendetta-addled former editor-now columnist for the Daily News named Michael Goodwin mounted an immediate campaign against the network. (He won a Pulitzer while editor for his vendetta against the one-time Inner City Broadcasting-owned Apollo Theater and it's management---yes...he has a bug up his ass about the African-American Sutton family that owns AAr's flagship frequency)
He personally called GM's ad sellers and complained about Randi's comparison of the Bush family to the Corleones and her direct comparison of W to the dim Fredo. GM blinked and yanked the account, biting into the direct revenue stream--thus the payroll hiccup.
They have secured other investors which have been named---and some prominent ones who have NOT been named. Money isn't the problem. Ad sales are. And those problems have abated considerably. Various pharmaceutical companies have recently signed on, nearly ALL of the free Ad Council ads are gone and believe it or not two of the newest advertisers to sign on are Shell Petroleum and...wait for it...Sam's Club AKA Wal-Mart. Ford stepped into the breach for GM based on the web stream numbers. Marketers can tell a lot about a target market that has computers or daily access to them where they can be listened to (white-collar jobs translates into people with money). As to the ratings numbers, they mean what they say. In the most desired demographic, Limbaugh got beat by a two-month old baby upstart in the biggest media market. That covers New York, New Jersey and Connecticut---a listener base of nearly 12 million people and in the city of the lionized-for-no-good-reason repug Giuliani, the present mayorlty of the trollish repug Bloomberg and the smirking three-term GOP governor Pataki. How does this affect the competition?
Here's how. AAR's direct competition namely the NPR affilliates WNYC/WNYE and my present employer WBAI-FM are scared sh*tless. We have been from the moment AAR announced it's impending existence. These are the progressive stations in the NY area and from the moment of the announcement we all knew that fund-raising was gonna take a massive blow to the head. If those listeners are listening to AAR (and unfortunately, they are), that means they're not listening when we have fund drives---which translates into diminished revenue. The vast bulk of public radio listeners don't pay in anyway, so any slip in the audience means a loss of potential wallets. And the audience has slipped. (In addition to the loss of a lot of behind the scenes local talent AAR has hired away)
Sorry to ramble, but as something of an insider, I felt I could tell you a bit more than you're hearing via the rumor mill and freeper-provacateurs. The station isn't perfect, but it's doing better and is on a serious upswing. Watch soon for the weekend gaps to be filled with new programming in lieu of the repeats. The recent ratings are excellent--proof of the pudding? The sad faces here at WBAI and at WNYC and in the invite of Franken to speak at the influential "Talkers" conference.
Thanks for reading,
LM
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=104&topic_id=1664394&mesg_id=1667009&page=

...and trust me..Phil Boyce (the WABC Programming Director) is boiling mad about the ratings book numbers. The period Franken cited is the midday block (as opposed to morning drive and evening drive which sandwiches it). He's already got his little anti-union attack poodle and weekend host Steve Malzberg (the whiny little f*ck who was on Scarborough-"how'd-that-dead-intern-get-in-my-office" Country last week) foaming at the mouth about it. The progressives in NY radio all get along in spite of the competition. JoAnne Allen who does the midday news on AAR is still on good terms with her buds at WNYC and all the Pacifica "Democracy Now" folks have a standing invite on Majority Report.
That said, there are some glum faces at NYC and BAI with the hit they've taken listener-wise. (Although with NYC's rightward drift, their pain I can live with.)