RIP: Air America

The troubled progressive talk network finally gave up the ghost this week, and a memorial service might well be held for a fair and balanced radio dial.

In the wake of November’s general election, liberal talk radio was eagerly anticipating the turning of the tide. The same people who propelled the election of Barack Obama and a decisive Democrat Congressional majority would, the reasoning went, tune in massively to hear fellow travelers match rants with the right.

As it turns out, progressive talk, like progressive everything else, went AWOL.

Regardless of what has or hasn’t happened in national politics, it’s clear to me that progressive talk radio will forever be a sliver format, sustainable only in the certain large cities and college communities, and a struggle even there.

Maybe it’s because that audience is well served by public radio. (Not just a few radio operators offer a nightly prayer that Arbitron will never list non-coms in its surveys, because they would change the game forever.)

Maybe it’s because as its problems compounded, its talent lineup became more and more insubstantial; founding personalities Al Franken and Janeane Garofolo, along with the likes of Thom Hartmann, Randi Rhodes and Rachel Maddow, found other things to do and/or places to do them.

Maybe it’s because that end of the political spectrum comprises people who can’t agree on anything, thus making the worst kind of radio—not to mention political—constituency. (More than once recently I’ve been reminded of Will Rogers’s quip, “I’m not a member of any organized political party. I’m a Democrat.”)

Whatever. Air America is out of business because it didn’t get the votes. The people have spoken. Rush Limbaugh lives to rant another day. Ron Reagan? Not so much.