Left turn ahead?

Mark Walsh’s frustration, and sense of purpose, grows as he recites the roster of nationally known conservative talk-radio hosts: Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, Bill O’Reilly, Matt Drudge, Laura Ingraham, G. Gordon Liddy, Oliver North, Michael Reagan, Larry Elder, Michael Savage ....The talk radio world tilts to the right, Walsh believes, and he wants to pull the axis as far as he can in the other direction.

Walsh, the chief executive of a company called Progress Media, isn’t alone in feeling frustrated by what he sees as a well-organized conservative onslaught dominating public debate and the airwaves. Two separate groups, both with Democratic Party ties, are hoping to start a cable television network and a radio network that they say will balance out the discussion. Walsh, the former chief technology advisor for the Democratic National Committee, is behind the radio effort; former Vice President Al Gore is leading the cable charge.

Rejecting conservative claims that established media outlets such as CNN, PBS and National Public Radio are already liberal mouthpieces, they are part of a broader movement to reinvigorate the left’s message through a synergistic web that also includes think tanks and advocacy groups.

But they aren’t starting small. Anyone can have a Web site and an Internet blog these days with just a minimum of technology and the savvy to use it. It’s a cheap, efficient way to get a message out. Instead, the would-be media entrepreneurs are shunning the medium of the moment in favor of the old-media workhorses, substantially complicating their efforts and raising the bar for their success.

Some naysayers are already expressing skepticism. “The voices of conservatism on talk radio are a very small slice of the pie that gets a big buzz,” argues Michael Harrison, a 35-year radio veteran who has programmed several stations including KMET-FM in Los Angeles and who now publishes Talkers, the trade magazine of the talk-radio industry. “Most people in America do not listen to political talk radio. Most people in America have never heard Rush Limbaugh.”

Others believe a left-leaning voice is needed. Alex Jones, director of Harvard University’s Joan Shorenstein Center on the Press, Politics and Public Policy, cites everything from dipping network news audiences to the growth of BBC news carriage on public radio and TV stations nationwide as evidence of “a lack of confidence, especially in television news.” There is, he says, “clearly a hunger for something.”

David G. Hall, vice president of programming for news stations KFWB-AM (980) and KNX-AM (1070), believes that the polarity of the current political climate makes the market for a liberal talk network more viable. “There’s a preponderance of conservative talk in the country, and a dearth of liberal talk,” Hall said.

“People want some kind of alternative. They only hear one thing coming out of the radio,” said Hall, formerly the program director at Southern California’s top-rated talk station, KFI-AM (640), the local home of Rush Limbaugh, and then vice president of programming at Premiere Radio Networks, the Sherman Oaks-based syndicator of Limbaugh, Laura Schlessinger, Matt Drudge and other talk stalwarts.

Michael Jackson, the dean of Los Angeles talk-radio hosts, due to his 30-year stint on KABC-AM (790), agrees, saying, “I have stopped listening to talk radio, because they’re predictable. You know exactly what you’re going to hear.... I think the time yearns for voices of moderation.”

Pacifica Radio, the long-established, noncommercial, community radio voice of progressive causes, saw its budget -- more than 90% of which comes from listener contributions -- jump 40% this year, from just under $11 million to $15.5 million, partly due to its coverage of antiwar viewpoints. Dan Coughlin, Pacifica’s executive director, attributes the growth to a “thirst for alternative voices,” and he says he welcomes the new entrants, which he said will “help open up the market for a diversity of views, and expand the market,” and provide a “much needed antidote to the right-wing infotainment that dominates the broadcast airwaves.”

But gone are the days when anyone can start up a network and find the stations or even cable systems to carry it.

Walsh, whose project has been in the planning stages for more than a year, is looking to buy or lease stations in Los Angeles, San Francisco, New York, Boston and Philadelphia, markets where good stations don’t come cheaply if they come up for sale at all. Progress Media’s lead investor is New York venture capitalist Evan Cohen, although Walsh wouldn’t discuss specifics about financing plans for the project. Some have questioned whether the stations that might be available for the erstwhile network would have the signal strength to reach a large enough audience.

“If they package it well and it’s entertaining, it can work,” said Perry Michael Simon, a former program director at KLSX-FM (97.1) in Los Angeles, and talk station WKXW-FM in Trenton, N.J., who is now news-talk-sports editor at AllAccess.com, an online journal of the radio industry. But, he added, “I’m skeptical they’ll have a signal.”

Gore and his backers, meanwhile, are negotiating to buy News World International (NWI), a small cable channel that would be reprogrammed with news and information programming targeted toward young adults with an MTV sensibility. (According to some people who claim to know what Gore’s team is up to, the TV service will avoid being tagged with a leftist political label.) A promised mid-November announcement, however, never happened. The deal has been held up by two media giants, Vivendi Universal Entertainment and VUE-stake holder Barry Diller, who are trying to settle their own financial differences before they let the little Vivendi-owned NWI go.

Walsh, whose network is called Central Air, is looking for a spring launch, while Gore’s team has been close-lipped about its plans, and Diller declined to comment on any potential resolution to the NWI situation. But once they get on the air, they have to find an audience. There’s broad agreement on how to do that: the programming has to be entertaining, even to those who don’t agree with the political viewpoint behind it. That’s the model Fox News Channel -- bete noire of the liberals for its abundance of conservative viewpoints -- has used to great success.

“Fox News has been shrewd enough to have talented people putting on programming that is interesting to watch whether you agree with the editorial voice expressed or not,” Harvard’s Jones said.

Jackson, who many believe fell out of favor for being to the left of most talk radio hosts, said the new network will have to be more magnanimous if it wants to do anything more than preach to a liberal choir. “They’ve got to be sufficiently open-minded that Republicans want to go on there,” said Jackson, who has been off the air since a format change ended his run at KLAC-AM (570) a year ago.

KNX/KFWB’s Hall also believes any new venture must “focus on being informative and as entertaining as possible. They have to be able to say something nobody else is saying.” The goal he said, should be to induce listeners to think, “ ‘Oh my God, that’s great. How come I haven’t heard that before?’ When Rush Limbaugh came on, that was the reaction.”

Writer Neal Gabler agrees that the new ventures will have to be entertaining, but he also sees a slightly different challenge. “What conservatives have done is co-opted the conventional wisdom,” by constantly repeating the same mantras “like a loop,” said the author of “Life the Movie: How Entertainment Conquered Reality.” Liberals, he said, will have to find a similar way to get their voice into the mix, but he also noted that the two groups of listeners are quite different. Liberal radio to succeed, he said, “can’t demonize constantly ....Liberalism is too complex. But as a media model, complexity does not play.”

Walsh, a former HBO and America Online executive, insists that Central Air, with 16 to 18 hours a day of live programming, will be entertaining, with a “tastes good, and good for you” approach to news and information. He said one of the keys to the network’s success will be to leaven its rhetoric with humor, exposing the foibles not only of conservatives, but those on the left who do or say something worth skewering, he said. “I don’t want to sound like the hectoring, lecturing liberals of old. There’s no better way to disarm people and get them ready for information than with humor.”

The company’s only on-air hire so far is Martin Kaplan, director of the Norman Lear Center at USC’s Annenberg School of Communication, who will host an evening show examining how the news media covered the day’s events. But Walsh has his eyes on Hollywood. “I think one of our targets is to be in the entertainment community. If they’re progressive-slash-liberal in their leanings, there will be an easy path for them” to get an airing on the network, he said.

Central Air is negotiating with satirist Al Franken -- author of “Rush Limbaugh Is a Big Fat Idiot” and this year’s successful “Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them: A Fair and Balanced Look at the Right” -- to helm one program. Comedian, actress and activist Janeane Garofalo is also a possibility. “She’s an example of somebody who could do a very good job with what we’re trying to do. She’s not afraid to mix it up with people on topics she’s passionate about,” Walsh said.

Walsh said he envisions a sensibility akin to Comedy Central’s “The Daily Show,” on which host Jon Stewart and his correspondents poke fun at the news of the day and conduct freewheeling interviews with guests ranging from Sen. Tom Daschle (D-SD) to Hannity to supermodel Heidi Klum.

Liz Winstead, co-creator of “The Daily Show,” will oversee Central Air’s comedy programming, and perhaps also go on-air.

Not everyone is convinced there’s a business model for the new venture.

Bill Davis, president of Southern California Public Radio, which operates KPCC-FM (89.3) in Pasadena, and former vice president for programming at NPR, said Central Air’s investors had better be patient about the success or profitability of the network, noting that Limbaugh and his brethren didn’t just materialize at the top of the ratings.

“Conservative talk radio really grew organically. It’s not like there was someone at the [conservative think-tank] Heritage Foundation crafting the idea,” Davis said. “Rush started to hit and people started doing Rush knockoffs and Rush imitations, and that rolled into a format people enjoyed, as much for the entertainment value as for any ideological reasons.

“From a business perspective, I have significant doubts about whether they’ll be able to pull this off,” he added. “If they do, it will make the radio dial a more interesting place.”

Jensen is a Times staff writer based in New York; Carney is a freelance contributor in Los Angeles.