Bake Sale

It was announced yesterday that Air America Radio has found another set of deep pockets to keep it's sorry ass on the air a little longer. But probably not that much longer. One of their original investors is a guy here in Madison, WI (The Peoples Republic of Madison) named Terry Kelly. He apparently dumped so much cash on this dog that he finally decided that you need more than just a lot of angry Bush haters to make a radio network economically viable. Advertisers would be nice. And usually, advertisers like RATINGS. That is unless you can convince them to spend money for a cause. That's what they did here. Clear Channel decided to shut down the Air America affiliate in Madison, in favor of an all sports format. Of course all the far lefties in this town (and there are lots of them), decided to hold a "bake sale." That is after Clear Channel explained to them that the format switch was due to the fact that nobody wanted to buy time on their sorry line up, and not due to corporate right wingers wanting to stop them from "talking truth to power." Not fully buying that explanation, they at least realized that advertising did have to be part of the equation. Ergo, the bake sale. Mustering all the "activists" they could find, they hit up every liberal that was even thinking about starting a business and convinced them to buy advertising time anyway. With commitments in hand, they were able to convince Clear Channel to reverse field and keep AAR going. Of course the activists refused to see the proof that Clear Channel (like most corporate types) couldn't care less about what gets them revenue, as long as they get it. They viewed it as some sort of political victory, as if they had protested Clear Channel into capitulating. Funny, usually they are more than willing to criticize corporations for only paying attention to the bottom line. But in this case they seem convinced that it was their activism and not the advertising commitments that made the difference. You would think that somebody in that group would realize that Rush doesn't have to hold bake sales to keep his network going. It will be interesting to see how long these folks will throw money at a broadcast failure.