Two More Top Executives Leave Air America Radio

Air America Radio’s chairman and vice chairman resigned Thursday in the latest shake-up at the liberal radio network that launched five weeks ago.

Chairman Evan Cohen, the network’s co-founder, who resigned along with vice chairman and investor Rex Sorensen, said he left for personal reasons.

“It was the right thing to do at the right time,” he said. “Very few people thought this could get going, and obviously it has been proven,” with what he called strong ratings in Portland, Ore., and New York. The network hasn’t released audience figures.

Company President Jon Sinton told the Chicago Tribune, which first reported the departures, that Cohen resigned because other investors weren’t happy with how he handled a financial dispute with affiliate stations in Los Angeles and Chicago, which resulted in the network’s going off the air in those cities, with no replacements yet lined up.

The company, whose most prominent hosts are Al Franken and Janeane Garofalo, recently also lost co-founder and Chief Executive Mark Walsh and pushed out its head of programming. Air America also missed its payroll this week by one day, for what insiders called technical reasons. Sinton didn’t return calls for comment.