"In five years, we'll be on 600 stations"--then-Air America bigwig Jon Sinton, in a 2004 interview with the Boston Globe's Mark Jurkowitz. It's five years later (well, four and a half after that article, technically) and libtalk is on maybe 60 stations.
Not counting the hundreds of NPR stations, that is...
Pingness
I honestly didn’t think they were still on the radio anywhere. The free market said NO, even with a significant population stupid enough to vote for the Obomber.
Congress of course has their commie lib eyes on ‘fixing’ this...
And the grand total output wattage of all their stations combined is about equal to one of Rush Limbaugh's stations.
So they are dropping one group of airheads for another group of airheads.
WINZ under Air America is doing better than the prior all-sports format there, and currently enjoys decent ratings, typically maintaining a 1.5 overall share in the Arbitron ratings. That makes it the 4th most popular AM station in the market !!
Don't assume that because it is being dropped it was doing poorly - consider the over-arching financial interests of Clear Channel, that trump ratings.
I will deeply miss Air America in South Florida. The corporate owners of Clear Channel and the other massive media outlets gain more from deregulation and conservative government than by high ratings. Rupert Murdoch has been buying up papers and losing money on them. A sixth sports station here won't make money, but it could stem the tide towards re-establishing proper rules about media ownership. Clear Channel with their hundreds of radio stations would be gone if the old rules were brought back, which prior to Clinton's killing them, limited total media outlet ownership to 36 locations.
Why isn't diversity of opinion valued any more? We - the citizens - own the airwaves. WE NEED TO DEMAND they are used in our interest, so they cannot be controlled by Hearst-type organizations like Clear Channel.
Check out the new WINZ website - it's now at least 3/4 pornography. All we have now from Clear Channel is YELLOW JOURNALISM from inflammatory right-wing radio hosts - the whole reason we made the rules in the first place decades ago was to prevent this dereliction of duty.
The FOURTH ESTATE will die without our action:
1. E-mail Sanda Coyle at Clear Channel to let her know how you feel about this switch: Sanda.Coyle@clearchannel.com
2. go to http://www.fair.org/index.php?page=6 to learn other ways to fight back
Check out the last entry for WINZ on Wikipedia !!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WINZ_(AM)
“On April 2, 2009, it was reported on radio-info.com that the station would switch to sports the following day, making it the sixth sports station in Miami; this follows Clear Channel’s trend of changing liberal talk formats (regardless of success) to its own Fox Sports network.”
Note the “regardless of success” !!!!
This confirms my analysis.
Also see: http://ltradio.blogspot.com/2009/02/black-monday-continued-winz-flipping-to.html
“The station currently enjoys decent ratings, typically maintaining a 1.5 overall share in the Arbitron ratings. That makes it the 4th most popular AM station in the market.”
I read somewhere else...can’t find the link now...that Air America out-performed the all-sports line-up on WINZ that preceded it.
Blatant disregard for their own profit motive....that’s ideological.
Break up Clear Channel now!!!