Saying that Air America is successful while saying that the Fairness Doctrine is necessary is sort of killing your argument.

Your argument is full of holes as well, simply because Rush Limbaugh, Mike Reagan, Sean Hannity, and all of them are funded by private sources, while, Air America was funded by taxpayers, a never-ending (apparently) source of revenue, and… it… still failed.

Maybe you’ll get your own article!

- The Arbitron numbers on the Wikipedia page are averaged over the majority of their programming day (assuming 24-hour stations, thats going to overlap any number of conservative competition). And honestly, if morning schlock jocks are outperforming progressive talk, your argument is on a very shaky foundation.

- Radio stations are businesses. They offer what people want. People apparently want conservative talk. If they didn’t those stations’ ratings would drop and they would go out of business.

- We know your primary theme is imbalance. It’s your assertions on the reason for that imbalance that are under attack, and rightly so — your assertions require an entity that is in business to make money and increase its market share, to perform in an non-competitive fashion. That’s absurd.

To buttress my argument, that it’s simply not as attractive an option for the majority of radio listeners, I provide data from an objective measuring agency — Arbitron — who is in the business of creating ratings based on listenership. I use their measurements of the strongest and most focused (to date) effort to create a progressive talk network: Air America. Since its launch with 100 affiliates, they dropped to 30 something, and have since made it back up to 66, 6 of which came on in the past 6 months.

Now, your thesis is based on this supposed hunger for an alternate progressive talk listening audience. I have demonstrated, in the most impartial way possible (with boring dry numbers), that your thesis simply doesn’t hold water in the real world. Your reaction to that has ranged from equivocation, to making excuses (excuses based on the conspiracy theory you harbor), to simply denying that the numbers mean what they say.

Numbers don’t lie, Minerva. Your conclusions require something that runs directly counter to human nature.

I don’t understand it either, TBH. People, for whatever reason, clearly seem to like their newspapers left, their radio right, and their TV a mix of the two. But to continue to maintain that it’s some vast corporate conspiracy is simply ridiculous.

Let’s take a similar example. For I don’t know how long now, there have been several conspiracy theories circulating that Detroit is suppressing 100mpg technology (the numbers vary, sometimes it’s 300mpg, and so on, sometimes it’s cars that run on water, etc). The theory is that they are in bed with the oil companies.

However, that doesn’t stand up to even a casual analysis: if any manufacturer had access to internal combustion technology that produced 100mpg in a vehicle that someone wanted to buy, they would corner the goddamn market. It’s just absurd to think that a business with that sort of potential market share would sit on it, and prefer to go out of business.

I’ve applied this analogy to your radio conspiracy theory, and the same result happens: if there is in fact this enormous unmet demand for progressive talk out there, common sense dictates that a business, in business to make money, is going to fill that need, because that means ratings and that means money. But apparently, even the flagship station of Air America can’t drum up significant market share, in what is arguably the most receptive market in America (possibly next to San Francisco) to progressive programming.

So how can you continue to deny the facts on this?

The fairness act is a transparent attempt for the government to get their dirty little hands into yet another public domain.

Others on the site have backed you up. Statistics and facts back up this Xavier person. You’re being silly.

Sorry if this has already been said, I got impatient around the 300s.

It seems that people generally just compare a certain program with their own views and then say it’s biased if it’s something they disagree with, I’ve seen people claim “liberal bias” on news that does absolutely nothing but state fact (eg. train crashed – 50 injured)

Since when does Air America have a RIGHT. It’s a freakin’ BUSINESS. If it can’t sell airtime, it deserves to fail. Just like all of these banks and others responsible for the sorry state of economy.

I’m onto a sneaking suspicision that you probably think that Economic Justice is written into the Constitution like that fool Bruce Springsteen.

FAIL

From here on I wish to be referred to as the “Bible of Scuba Diving”.

You discredit yourself by citing all of these supremely left leaning sources and then trying to state that liberal talk shows have mass or mainstream appeal. If they do its because they do, not because of statistics given by a group of folks with an agenda…all stats can be manipulated and you know it. You can’t defend a publication that only prints 10 issues a year and yet somehow is heralded by the lapdog publication of a soon to be defunct liberal media giant.

Take a step outside yourself and you’ll see you’ve been played. And that’s the only way to beat the game. Because you think you’re fighting with a republican. But you’re not. You’re fighting with true conservative that hates the Republicans just as much as the Dems. I figured out long ago that their constant fighting…by which I mean OUR constant fighting…is what is really leading the country down the tubes.

So your call, you wanna keep dancing, lil puppet or you wanna take a stepback and look at what you’ve been doing all over this page?

Not to mention, the only thing I cited from them is their compilation of ratings data. Or are you suggesting they made all that up too? Since Xavier says wikipedia is a great source, here’s what the beginning of that article says: “Talkers Magazine is a trade industry publication related to talk radio in the United States. Its slogan is “The Bible of Talk Radio and the New Talk Media”. In addition to radio, it covers talk shows on broadcast and cable television as well as Internet-only shows and podcasting.

Twice a year, Talkers publishes rankings of the top-rated radio talk shows; these rankings are often quoted in newspapers and other publications. “

And “public” things aren’t all that public…how public is PBS if you don’t own a TV? Or how about the airwaves if you don’t own a radio? I’m pretty sure the stereotypical homless guy with a shopping cart considers PBS and the airwaves as for “them upper class”.
And as for TALKERS…here’s all I need to know about that website. It’s run by a guy named Michael Harrison, and here’s snippet from that site:
“TALKERS publisher Michael Harrison presented this year?s Freedom of Speech Award to Air America talk host Al Franken. ”

Fair and Balanced doesn’t work in either direction.
You’re a liberal pushing a website run by a guy that’s a liberal who’s in the business of pushing liberal talk radio.

So, how is the kool aid?