Air America flies back to Southland
Air America Radio, the liberal talk network that was dismissed, derided and unceremoniously yanked off the air in Los Angeles two weeks after its April debut, is returning to the airwaves here -- this time under the aegis of the nation’s largest radio chain.
Clear Channel Communications is announcing today that its KXTA-AM (1150) will switch to “progressive talk” on Feb. 3 and carry the network whose lineup includes comedians Al Franken and Janeane Garofalo, as well as left-leaning hosts from other syndicates.
“We have the Rush Limbaughs and the Sean Hannitys now, who have moved pretty far to the right. So there’s all this constituency to the left of that,” said Gabe Hobbs, vice president of news, talk and sports programming for Clear Channel, which owns eight stations locally and more than 1,200 nationwide. “To me, there’s a hole big enough to drive a truck through.”
KXTA will feature Franken, the political satirist and “Saturday Night Live” alumnus weekday mornings from 9 a.m. to noon. He’s followed from noon to 3 p.m. by Ed Schultz, a North Dakota Democrat whose own national show is distributed by Jones Radio Networks.
A burly, garrulous ex-football player and ex-Republican, Schultz said his migration to the left started in 1998 when his future wife invited him for a meal at the homeless shelter where she worked. Now the 17-year industry veteran out of Fargo is one of the leaders of a hot trend in liberal talk.
“A year ago they were laughing at us; now they’re signing us up,” he said. “The Democrats have been correct on the issues. They just haven’t had somebody say it like I say it.”
With Washington, D.C., Detroit and Cincinnati switching formats this week, Clear Channel has progressive talk on 22 of its stations, including others in San Francisco, Boston and Miami. They all use the bulk of the Air America lineup but also substitute other programs, such as Schultz or former KFI-AM (640) and KABC-AM (790) host Stephanie Miller.
The KXTA change comes as part of a reshuffling by Clear Channel. It had been simulcasting sports talk on KXTA and XTRA-AM (690), a station out of Tijuana. Now sports moves to KLAC-AM (570), which already carries Lakers games. The adult standards on KLAC -- Frank Sinatra, Billie Holiday, Norah Jones -- head to 690.
After a long and well-publicized incubation, Air America debuted last March 31 on six stations, including KBLA-AM (1580) in Santa Monica. Only two weeks later, a billing dispute knocked it off that station for good, and an ensuing management shakeup revealed the network’s finances weren’t as rosy as they had claimed. To critics, it was proof the venture was doomed.
Franken had to forgo his paycheck for a while, but in December he signed a contract for at least two more years. And the network now airs on 46 stations, nearly half of them Clear Channel owned.
The Clear Channel-Air America pairing might seem like strange bedfellows -- after all, the Texas-based behemoth distributes Rush Limbaugh and other conservative-talk heavyweights. Free speech and consumer advocates have criticized its size and hardball business practices, and as having a too-cozy relationship with the Bush administration.
But “radio companies are not political parties,” said Michael Harrison, publisher of Talkers magazine, the trade journal of talk radio. “Their motivations are ratings and revenue.”
In San Diego, where Clear Channel switched its KPOP-AM (1360) adult standards station to progressive talk on Aug. 23, the ratings went from a 1.6% share of the audience to 2.6%. In Portland, Ore., KPOJ-AM (620) went from 0.4% to 4% after dropping oldies. The Denver sports outlet improved from .5% to 1.5%, and in Miami, a station that didn’t register at all in audience surveys, had a 1.2% share after switching from sports to Air America.
“Even the bad publicity when they were in trouble turned out to be a good thing for them in the long run,” Hobbs said. “They’ve done a good job of branding themselves as the Kleenex or Coke of progressive radio.”