Air America discounts new rumors

Financially strapped Air America Radio acknowledged Thursday, after star commentator Al Franken said publicly that his paycheck had stopped coming, that it had suffered a small number of layoffs but insisted there were no plans for the liberal talk-show network to declare bankruptcy.

“If Air America had filed for bankruptcy every time someone rumored it to be doing so, we would have ceased to exist long ago,” said network spokeswoman Jaime Horn in a statement.

Horn said there were “a handful of layoffs” that followed a move of the network’s New York outlet from WLIB-AM to WWRL-AM, a station with a less powerful signal. Horn said no decision was made on any filing.

Franken, broadcasting Thursday from New York, said that he was aware of the bankruptcy rumors, but he assured listeners that the financial problems wouldn’t silence the network.

He said he discovered that his paychecks had stopped last week. “No cash has been flowing to me,” Franken, who makes a reported $2 million a year, told the New York Sun. “That’s the first inkling I got of a cash flow problem.”