Thanks for clearing that up, Danny, now renew Marc Maron's contract and no one gets hurt

I kid, I kid. I'm not threatening Danny Goldberg. Sheesh.

Today Eric Alterman uses his blog to shoot holes in the relentless refrain by the gasbags on the right that Air America Radio is in dire straits. Because Alterman is a Real Journalist and Big Name Blogger, and I am just a loyal Air America listener who only has the station on 3 radios at a time when I'm home, he's been able to get the straight poop from AAR CEO Danny Goldberg:

Air America is in strong financial shape. Last week we started broadcasting from our new multi-million dollar studios. Several weeks earlier the Board of Directors of Air America’s parent company accelerated re-payment of a loan from the Gloria Wise Boys and Girls Club of $875,000 two years in advance of a previously agreed upon re-payment plan.

The Air America Associates Program was created in response to our listeners requests to support our programming financially and is modeled after the Nation’s Magazine program, “The Nation’s Associates,” which is also a for-profit company.

Rush Limbaugh’s Web site offers his fans the “Limbaugh Letter” for $34.95 a year and a totally separate service called Rush 24/7 which includes access to archived programs at the cost of $49.95 a year. The Limbaugh site also features the “EIB Store” which sells such items as $19.95 polo shirt which amusingly says, “My Mullah went to G’itmo and all I got was this lousy t-shirt.”

The Sean Hannity Web-site features a “subscription” to something called, “The Hannity Insider” for $5.95 a month.

But no one tops the self proclaimed non-spinner Bill O’Reilly. Bill O’Reilly.com offers a “premium membership” for either $4.95 a month or $49.95 a year. He also offers a “Gift certificate” for $14.95.

[snip]

On a nationwide basis the most recent Arbitron ratings Spring 2005 book showed that our affiliates reach over three million people per week, each of whom listens for an average of several hours a week. This is more than triple the amount of people who were listening when measured one year earlier in the Spring, 2004 book.

According to the most recent Arbitron Report, Summer 2005 Metro:

Mon-Sun 6a12m, AQH, Share and Cume have all increased for both Persons 12+ and Adults 25-54.
For Adults 25-54, WLIB’s target audience, AQH is up 29%, Share increased 40% (from 1.0 to 1.4) and Cume increased 9%; for Persons 12+, AQH is up 6%, Share is up 20% and Cume is up 11%.
WLIB ranks #2 in A25-54 TSL MSu6a12m (10h30m per week) among NY Talk stations, a 20% increase since the Spring 2005 book.

- The ratings for the Bill O’Reilly radio show in New York were worse in the demo of A25-54 than those on Air America that he described as “catastrophic.”
- In the key 25-54 demographic which talk radio offers to advertisers, the Summer 2005 Arbitron ratings showed that Monday-Friday from 2-4 PM when O’Reilly is on WOR-AM and which at Air America’s 1190 WLIB-AM contains the last hour of “The Al Franken Show” and the first hour of “The Randi Rhodes Show,” that O’Reilly had a 0.6 share and Air America a 1.8 share. O’Reilly had a cumulative audience of 45,800 and Air America had a cumulative audience of 95,700.