Air America: The Good, the Bad, and the Ridiculous

It's bad enough that my new Droid Incredible opens up entirely new vistas of wasting time, but it appears that much of Netroots Nation is available via online video for the watching. I don't know when I'll plow through everything I want to see, but this panel featuring former Air America employees and personalities is enlightening -- and frustrating as hell for those of us who turned on WLIB at noon on March 31, 2004 and didn't turn it off until they moved up to a weaker signal up the dial. I'll bet you never knew that "The Majority Report" with Sam Seder and Janeane Garofalo had better ratings in New York than the wingnuts. I didn't either, which is a good chunk of the problem.

No I will not just let it go

If you weren't one of the people who turned on the radio on March 31, 2004 at noon and had the sense of "Yes! I'm home!", you can go read something else. Because there is no way you can possibly fathom what the millions (and yes, there were millions) of people who were Air America listeners went through as they watched various permutations of management run something fresh and potentially wondrous into the ground because they couldn't see past their own noses.

Melina, who knows more about the business of radio than you and I ever will, for reasons it's up to her to reveal, wrote about the final stake in the rotting heart of Air America yesterday. But there is something else going on that has angry Air Americans, specifically Morning Seditionists, coming out of the woodwork like zombies risen from the grave.

As Melina wrote, Danny Goldberg, who is perhaps the person most responsible for wrecking the programming that Air America offered in the early days, must have been feeling pretty guilty lo these last four years (assuming he has a conscience, which is doubtful), because he posted this laughable screed over at Down with Tyranny. Now, here at B@B, we loves us some DWT, but giving space to this revisionist scumbag has to have grown of nothing but the chumminess of two music industry vets and nothing approaching reality.

95 comments later, insiders from Air America in general and Morning Sedition in particular are starting to tell their stories, and they aren't pretty. From original producer Jonathan Larsen (now a producer on Countdown with Keith Olbermann, proving beyond a doubt that living well is the best revenge) to the zany Jim Earl (of Sammy the Stem Cell, Morning Remembrance, and Rapture Watch fame), to the anonymous staffers, the people who were there are using Goldberg's Variations as a springboard to finally, after four years, tell their stories.

WWRL here in New York is showing signs of a revamped drive-time lineup that includes ex-late-AAR-er Jack Rice until 6 PM, followed by, yes, Morning Sedition's straight man, Mark Riley, from 6-8, which would be a not-half-bad lineup if the memories of Randi Rhodes, Marty Kaplan, and Sam Seder weren't still so fresh and raw.

So go read what really happened, then come back and click the audio player in the right-hand sidebar....and listen to the Best Damn Show Ever on Radio as its sounds hopefully haunt Danny Goldberg to madness. Then maybe you'll understand why, after four years, we're still angry.

So Long Air America Radio...

There was a time when I listened to AAR all day. The early programming was that good, and with the exception of the grating Randi Rhodes who I sometimes couldn't take, it was my touchstone of sanity at a dark time in American politics. At some point I realized that I was keeping the radio on all day as I went through my schedule, often stopping to write things down and look them up, always feeling like there was some small ray of hope in what had become a real national nightmare.

For AAR, still considered fledgling, its been a rough go of investors and owners who wanted to see a profit in a business that is guaranteed to not show a profit for years. The lack of patience that each management team has shown was uniquely American, causing the loss of its best shows, tinkering all the time rather than allowing momentum to grow, and missing chances to build on the incredible well of talent that had been assembled from the beginning. Someone was sleeping in Broadcasting 101, unless this was just another corporate fuck, with the attitude of 'how much can we get out of this sucker?' and leave the drained carcass to die. The teams that came and went certainly talked a good game aboutAAR being more than just a station; yeah, really, "a movement!!" but the problem is bigger than just that; Americans want their profit and their big screen TV yesterday. We haven't yet lined up our Rupert Murdoch, willing to lose billions of dollars in service to a message. The visionary part of that for theneocon very rich is the long run, where an administration like Bushco actually pays them and their friends back tenfold in contracts and breaks. Im not so sure that the very rich liberals are that tied in to the military complex or visionary enough in the same sort of cut throat take over the world vision.

The day that Ronald Reagan did away with the fairness doctrine which protected our airwaves from the likes of the sort of big business machine that has come to rule them, was the day that this all began. The airwaves belong to the American people and the push of capitalism to take over and privatize everything is uniquely ...um...neocon. Privatization with regulations cut, and batty uncle Ronny saying "why do we need regulations? Old Mr Floyd from the hardware store down the street is perfectly willing to police himself...? Right?" Of course, the legacy of that deregulation has come to fruition now in the Supreme Court ruling that corporations have seemingly endless rights...forget it, we're fucked...

So long AAR; it went into reruns last Thursday and no one even noticed. The New York Times had a piece the other day about how liberal radio has to be more business-like and in these troubling financial times it was a bad business proposition,yada, yada, yada....
OK, was anyone gonna get rich on this? They were fools if they thought so. The new corporate model of a quick payout doesn't work in this medium, and trying to force that made the thing messy and embarrassing by the end, with the likes of the well hated, smarmy, Mark Green and his infomercials and continual failed bids at being a political player..."hey, wanna go on a cruise?"...yuck!

AAR was a mad experiment cast by the minds that brought us the likes of the Daily Show, it had a different tone, and it expected more of the audience than to just sit back and absorb the lies; the early Air America challenged us to think, reason, and take control of our lives using the tool of truth. The entire weekday lineup was challenging and at a time where the government was spewing lies at us, echoed by the main stream media news outlets, so, it followed that this programming would take all the more time to find its audience and create the foundation upon which to grow. We sounded like conspiracy theorists beforeAAR came along and we had Al Franken fact checking everything thoroughly...to the point that no matter what anyone said about him and how ne presented things, they coulldnt say that what he said wasnt true. This was a revelation for me; you could hate Al and his persona, you could say "youre gonna believe that guy?" but you couldnt ever say that his facts were incorrect.
It did find an audience, in that the numbers were growing with the kind of fans that are loyal and long-term. The problem was to maintain an already screwed up business situation and for that they brought in the wrong person.

Danny Goldberg, CEO/investor/good friend of Don Imus, and a music industry "big shot", seemed to think that with Don's input he could program a radio station like he was rearranging the songs on a record or the members of a band. Coming into a situation midstream must have been difficult for him, and the pressure of the board and stockholders was an issue but really, what was needed was a firm hand in assuring everyone that tinkering too much would dislodge the invaluable hardcore fans in the service of passing numbers. According to Goldberg, he turned himself inside out fighting The Man, saving RachelMaddow from obscurity, and if not for the stockholders and capitalism in general, he was going to save radio from itself.
This guy thought that his gut could somehow turn AAR into a profitable business, way ahead of schedule, and on top of that he would tinker with a lineup with steadily growing numbers to try to create a magic that he knew nothing about. If he thought he could show a profit at that point and presented himself in that light, he was full of shit. No programming, much less a new station which is building an audience could be profitable in that amount of time. In a way it was folly to put a non-radio guy in that job in the first place, but perhaps that was the only way that the investors could hear what they wanted to; that this thing wasn't going to hemorrhage money for 4 or 5 years at least. Goldberg quickly ushered in the beginning of the end of AAR and as much as I understand that he viewed this as production pre-release, he was unprepared for what would happen when he messed with what was a good lineup. His claims that he was hired to raise money fall on deaf ears here, because he clearly was rearranging the lineup more than he was out raising money. This was not the job for him.

Yesterday Goldberg wrote what I'm sure he thinks is the definitive obit of AAR at Down With Tyranny , (and then much more in comments,) alot of pap about how he struggled under the finger of the money people, and how they stopped him from raising funds because of their feelings of asking for funds being unseemly...huh?...He said that maybe he was an asshole sometimes...he had such a hard time...etc...feel sorry for him?...No! He walked out of there with a big payout at a time when the station was foundering, and was one person who did OK in the situation; he didn't take a bath the way others did and he took his payout while others, like talent whodidnt come into this rich, were owed money. Its not our problem that he accepted a job for less money than he normally makes; he did OK for doing not much that was helpful andalot that was destructive.

What I know from the inside and as the spawn of a radio family, is that you don't treat people, much less the working talent, like shit, especially in their last weeks. Goldberg might have made the mistake of his life by trying to "saveAAR" instead of staying in the music business "where he belongs," but during his time at AAR he certainly tried to cut a bold swath of change, relegating the same Maddow that he supposedly saved from obscurity, FROM the 9AM-noon slot in the fantastic Unfiltered show, TO the dead 5AM slot. He then set about deconstructing Morning Sedition, which was one of the best shows on radio, period. He didn't likeMaron and he didn't get the comedy. He didn't make a secret of that either, and to say that it was purely a business decision forced on him by the stockholders and other bosses is disingenuous at best.

Goldberg knows the truth, and regardless of the depths of his depression, which may have had him playing solitaire on his computer for hours on end in his office, rather than raising funds or whatever it was that he was supposed to be doing, he isn't going to be able to escape what happened and his part in it. Tying himself to the coat tails ofMaddow is not going to change history either; sorry. The advice of Don Imus was wrong; Goldberg had no talent in programming and tinkering, and every move he made was to render the programming into a more and more dumbed down,happy, format. It did whatAAR had never done, which was to pander to the audience. By the time he had alienated the base, what was left?

The Mark Riley Show was what Goldberg wanted, and it was junk....totally junk. It reminded me of the Whoopie Goldberg Feel Good Show, which was not what the base was tuning in for. Riley was a pawn in all of that, and his show was painful to listen to. What could he follow up that sort of brilliance with? The Riley Show was what Goldberg thought was good radio. Regardless of the corporate structure or the financial situation, this guy came into a tanking situation and instead of trying to shore up what was there and growing he decided to scramble it all up and put the best talent either out of a job or in the boondocks. Even with star power, had any been there beyond those with a strong following, it would have been starting over. I havealot of trouble with Goldbergs's line about firing Maron to save Maddow. I just don't think that's true at all...and I am sure that Rachel is not thanking Goldberg for her great career.

Rachel had star power when she started Unfiltered, and continued to be herself on the same intense level straight through to Olbermann regardless of and in spite of Goldberg. The first thing he did was to cancel her show!! Those who got put at 5AM or on Sundays were those with contracts still in effect as opposed to those who's contracts were up.

What became of those talented players? Check out Maron's fantastic WTF Podcast and of course the Rachel Maddow show, which is a must watch every night of the week on MSNBC. I am assuming that Maddow's radio show is no longer available anywhere.
For background on that one particularly brilliant show and its comedy bits, check out Sedition Radio for which we owe PJ Sauter a huge debt of gratitude. The rest is out there if you look for it: Unfiltered, Sam Seder, Janeane Garafolo, even Al and Randi who had their ups and downs, but still are sorely missed around here... Lizz Winstead deserves a shout for putting alot of it together; Its over for good.

AAR as it was in the beginning, brought me laughter, joy, relief, and a kind of deep misery at its loss, that I couldn't have expected. I always though that this was so much more than a radio station and should be funded by a Rupert Murdoch type of deep pocket investor, but for whatever reasons it was set up wrong, by the wrong business folks and that doomed it from the start. Its all about the money in the end, and the money wasn't there...but it should have been, considering how much money is out there in liberal land. Showing a growing audience of loyal listeners and tapping those listeners for funding would surely have gone further towards interesting investors than dismantling what they had back to zero.

What of the Fairness Doctrine? These are our airwaves and just because Rush Limbaugh is a huge corporate force barreling through all sense and reason, doesn't mean that this outlet shouldn't be regulated by the government so that one corporation can exert too much influence on people because of money...um...oh yeah...never mind; corporations are now individuals with rights. As it stands our free airwaves are being used to misinform the people of this country, leaving the Fairness Doctrine as perhaps the most important political issue to address because of the way it touches all other issues; voting on issues that you have been lied to about comes to mind.

It was an idea and a dream, and much like Obama not being a corporatist or Edwards telling even the most basic truth, its all gone now. Rush andO'Reilly can breathe a sign of relief because there is really only Sirius Left, for those who have the subscription money; Internet radio shows for those who can afford the Internet ...the rabble will never hear a bit of truth. Maybe its when things are really bad and there is no hope left, that some sort of movement will begin that will rise up and again give voice to the progressive agenda. Heaven knows we're out here in Internet-land shouting into the black hole and hoping someone hears. But there is too much noise, and we need more than just one Rachel Maddow to move this thing forward.

Its kind of sad to let those dreams go. But somewhere out there in podcasts or blogtalkradio format the message still lives, and in that there is hope, even if its sketchy....
godspeed to our kids, that's all I can say...this is a very different country than any of us could have imagined.

c/p RIP Coco

(UPDATE: From the comments, former Morning Sedition producer and current producer of WTF Brendan McDonald (who was there at the time) debunks Danny Goldberg's Variations.

Alan Grayson Tells it Like it Is! Pap on the Healthcare Debate

Ring of Fire's Mike Papantonio may be one of the only couple of good things left on Air America these days, and here Pap Attacks the health insurance corporations with the help of Rep. Alan Grayson (D-Fla,) who is so refreshingly logical that he makes me want to cry.

Why is it so hard for Americans to get their minds around the concept of shaking up a corrupt industry in order to help our neighbors stay healthy and alive? How could we have gotten to a point where we are more interested in protecting huge corporations and when did we decide that we would prefer these same corporations to be in our lives and running our health care into the ground while stealing us blind?

It must be that people are bamboozled by the lobby's doublespeak...it has to be that people think they are saving on taxes or something, and cant see that in the big picture there will be savings all around. But, honestly, if that is really what its about, then there is something wrong with America. All of the religious folks out there who feel like they do their duty by going to church on Sunday or Temple on Saturday or Mosque whenever, have to reassess what is important in their lives. We cant just let people be sick and die, some 44,000 per year, so that we can have a tax break. No one is more deserving than anyone else; we all rely on luck in this country, and every one of us stands, in some way, on the shoulders of the person who went before us and who stands beside us.




To learn more about Grayson's background listen to part 2. This is a guy with the kind of prior experience to be a profound force in the progressive movement, and hopefully an important player in higher office. What has he done to block fraudulent contractors from receiving funds via contracts from our government?
What do we need to do to effect real change? Grayson explains it all here:



h/t to Go Left TV for bringing us video coverage of many of the high points of the debate out there. Go there and subscribe to their feed!

c/p RIP Coco

Whither Air America?

After four years of being a "premium" (later "on demand") subscriber to Air America, I finally told them to stuff it after they cancelled Break Room Live last summer. Sorry, but the snake oil infomercial known as "Montel Across America" just doesn't do it for me.

This compendium of clips from the documentary Left of the Dial gives you a taste of the kind of fresh gonzo "Hey Kids Let's Put On a Radio Show" stuff that was going on at Air America in the beginning:

"Ohio is a big problem." How right that was.

Back in those days, you could turn on WLIB at 6 AM if you were in the New York area and not turn it off until late at night. You could start with the brilliant now-cult classicMorning Sedition, then see if Chuck D was going to actually show up on Unfiltered, then listen to now-Senator Al Franken and Katherine Lanpher banter on The O'Franken Factor, then listen to the rants of Randi Rhodes, then listen to So What Else is News with Marty Kaplan before Sam Seder and Janeane Garofalo came on at 7 PM.

Oh, not all of it was wonderful. Lizz Winstead, without whom there would be no Daily Show, didn't translate all that well to radio, and Chuck D was half asleep mush of the time. Al Franken could get preachy and "The Oy Oy Oy Show" was only funny if you were Jewish. Janeane Garofalo was awful on radio. But we all know how Rachel Maddow has shone as a media personality, and there's a reason we still feature the 24/7 feed of comedy bits from Morning Sedition in the sidebar. But the most important thing is that the original Air America lineup was a kind of experiment in radio. The charges that Randi Rhodes was, and still is, a Limbaugh for the left may have some validity (other than the fact that Rhodes actually prepares for her show by arming herself with facts where Limbaugh just pulls lies out of his ass), but the rest of the inexperienced lineup was just winging it. The quality may have been uneven, but we'd never seen the like of the original lineup's energy and commitment before, nor are we likely to again.

As everyone who follows this blog knows, we've been watching the trainwreck that Air America has become fairly closely over the four-plus years we've been doing this blog. And now, after cancelling their best web-based show, the entity now known as Air America Media has made another bonehead decision -- that the best way to present its future is to become a clone of the Huffington Post.

Creeping Huffingtonism has become a plague upon the blogosphere. With Arianna Huffington's connections and financial resources, HuffPo has become the 800-pound gorilla of online journalism. There are things HuffPo does well, and there are some actual journalists like Sam Stein filling its web pages along with the columns about high colonics and slow sex. But the "News Aggregator" concept is taking over, even at such venerable progressive sites as Talking Points Memo.

And now, in yet another fantastically boneheaded move by the latest incarnation of clueless suits to occupy what passes for the executive offices at Air America Media, there's another HuffPo clone out there:



Look familiar? And like HuffPo, the web site of the company that was going to provide an alternative political voice is concerned with things like impending charges against the "balloon boy dad", Hollywood's crazies and sexiest characters, and noise complaints against Madonna.

Meanwhile, Al Franken is a United States Senator, Rachel Maddow causes the ratings of the abysmal Press the Meat to rise every time she is on the panel, and Marc Maron, freed at last from being yanked by the Air America chain, has a top-10 comedy podcast at iTunes and will be featured on John Oliver and Friends on Comedy Central later this year.

Because living well is the best revenge.

The Day Teh Funny Died

Remember how you felt that time you saw Miles Davis in the mid-1980's when the edgiest guy in jazz had been reduced to playing "Time after Time" in a yellow satin shirt, and then after he died, Mr. Brilliant turned to you and said "He's been dead for years already."

Oh, wait. That was me.

So it is with the company formerly known as Air America Radio and now known as "Those motherfuckers at AAR."

Last Wednesday the final nail was put into the coffin of what used to be something fresh and new and almost daring and exciting when Marc Maron and Sam Seder were kicked in the teeth once again, being told right before the Wednesday Break Room Live webcast that it would be their last one. The current batch of suits at Air America Media have once again fired the only remnants left of when progressive talk radio was something worth listening to. Every iteration of the various people who have gone through the revolving door of a level of mismanagement of that property even more than the Wilpons have managed the New York Mets has made matters worse. When you look at what constitutes the "talent" at AAR these days, it's sickening: Ron Reagan with his jihad against fat people. Montel Williams, moonlighting from his career as infomercial pitchman and shill for Astra-Zenica. Does anyone actually listen to these people? Even Ron Kuby, who is no great shakes as a host himself, has been screwed over by these people.

I wish I could say I was surprised. I wanted to write something coherent and passionate about what these people have done over and over and over again to these two guys who have sweated bullets and given their hearts and souls to try to make Air America work. But I couldn't. Part of it is the ridiculous hours I'm working, but part of it is that I'm just tired of it -- because it's what I expect now from Air America "Media." I EXPECT these people to try to sell me a shit sandwich and tell me it's roast beef with gravy and think I'm going to eat it. So when I found out on Wednesday, there wasn't the sense of OH MY GOD WHAT AM I GONNA DO NOW? that I had when Morning Sedition was cancelled. It was mostly just sadness -- sadness that these two talented and decent men who have so much to offer the sociopolitical discourse in this country and who have built a ferociously loyal community of smart, funny fans that sane management would treasure have been so shabbily treated by a company that seems bound and determined to do whatever it has to in order to fail spectacularly.

This morning I ground the last of a bag of "Angry Chef Happy Coffee" from Just Coffee, the show's only sponsor, and said "I really should keep this bag right next to the Morning Sedition coffee mug as a reminder of what's gone."

And so it is that I really have nothing to say, except thank you, Marc and Sam. Thank you for helping me feel not so lost during my first week in a country where I didn't know the language and didn't know a soul, but where I could turn on my netbook at 9:00 PM (Cologne time) and get a taste of teh funny and teh smart and teh clever. Thanks for your hard and tireless work over the last five years to try to make something work that can't be saved. And now, go forth and make thine own way. We will follow you. If you build it, they will come.

More from Rachel Sklar and the incomparable P.J. Sauter, who still keeps Teh Funny going via his 24-hour loop of Morning Sedition interviews and comedy bits that you can listen to in the right-hand sidebar right here at B@B.

UPDATE: Sederite "Alice" over at SamSederShow.com wrote to TMaAAR and got the following response:

I understand how you feel about the loss of Break Room Live. The only thing I can do at the moment is promise you that I will show your comment to upper management.

Also, here are two statements about the cancellation--one from CEO Bennett Zier and one from Program Director Bill Hess. They were released via Twitter this week:

Here’s tweet #1 from Bill Hess –

"For now, the daily live stream of Air America's @BreakRoomLive has been discontinued. Visit your favorite shows here: http://bit.ly/yEZ8Q "

Here’s tweet #2 from Bennett Zier –

"We love @MarcMaron @SamSeder. They are very talented. We hope to work with them in the future."

Thanks,

Bob Drummond
Air America Support

Bennett Zier loves Maron and Seder so much he fired them. That's some twisted-ass love.

Heh. "Teabag Obama."

How Rachel Maddow managed to get through this, I have no idea:

It's always about sex with these wingnuts, isn't it?

For the uninitiated...

UPDATE: While watching this clip the second time, I remembered a particular "Pendejo the Revolutionary" bit from Morning Sedition:

"Pendejo" (a creation of Tom Johnson) renamed his revolutionary group a few times, starting with North American Mobilized Battalion of Liberal Aggressors (NAMBLA), moving through the Battalion of Aggressive Liberal-Loving Seditionists (BALLS), the Progressive Underground Destabilization League (PUDL), the Geoglobal Action Liberal Stormfront (GALS), and finally to Tactical Elite And Battle Action Group (TEABAG).

All of which goes to show you just how ahead of its time Morning Sedition really was.

Uh, Mr. Kireker? These guys are all you've got left. What're you gonna do with 'em?

Rachel Maddow simply can't continue to burn the candle at both ends, and sll she can give you is an hour of material mostly recycled from her TV show, and frankly, I think it's only out of respect for the network that launched her career that she's even doing that.

You ran Randi Rhodes out of town on a rail over money.

Your predecessors fired Mike Malloy while he was driving to work.


Now Thom Hartmann has moved his program to Dial Global.

So what have you got left? Jon Elliot? Richard Greene? Ron Reagan? Ron Kuby? Just how big a following do any of these guys have?

Meanwhile, sitting in your break room, are your last two vestiges of the Air America that was. You weren't around then, but it was something new and fresh and experimental. Are there two people who have been kicked around by how many generations now? -- of Air America management more than Sam Seder and Marc Maron? And does anyone have a bigger following? How many people on radio, right OR left, have the kind of loyalty that these two guys have from their listeners? Your company has fired Marc Maron THREE TIMES already -- and he's still there....or there again. Now we could say that Maron is like a wife (an unfortunate analogy, given the one-man show he's working on) who keeps coming back to her estranged spouse because she hopes in her heart that this time, baby, it really WILL be different. Or we could give you the benefit of the doubt and say that you really ARE trying to atone for Danny Goldberg's sins.

But the bottom line, Charlie, is that you really don't have a whole lot of marketable talent in your stables right now, other than the two guys in the break room with the built-in and growing following that crashed the server the other day.

So....what's it to be then, eh? Are you going to utilize what little real talent you have left? Or are you going to continue Air America's grand tradition of blowing the best opportunities you have?

Fallen Masters

October 1st, baby! 3:00 PM Eastern Time. Be there or be gainfully employed and catch it later.

Maron V. Seder Debuts Live, Wed. Oct 1st, 2008

In the meantime, check here for the past vods that led to the messy birth of this thing. Technical glitches and growing pains aside, its a fantastic show and they guys have great chemistry. Add that to the fantastic and funny commentary therein on the state of things and you have a huge slice of what made early Air America great...and what alot of us have been fighting to get back for too long now!
Be sure to check back www.samsedershow.com daily before 3 PM to catch the warm-up shows live. I'm not sure of the schedule, but its well worth it to see this thing unfold in real time. Congratulations, guys! We love you!

( hey, wait a minute...wasn't that Seder v. Maron for a minute there?...)

Want more?


Go here for the rest!

c/p RIPCoco

Friday Cat Blogging: Special Maron v. Seder edition

The prodigal son is returning, and there was much joy and celebration throughout the land.

Ever since December 2005, and especially since the middle of 2006, those of us who have been carrying the torch for the late and lamented Morning Sedition have been waiting with bated breath for any news whatsoever that perhaps the suits at Air America Radio might have realized the colossal mistake that occurred 4,287 management changes ago (or so it seems), when Danny Goldberg decided that because he didn't like Marc Maron, one of the most popular shows on the network should be cancelled. Since then, the faithful Maronisti have been congregating over at PJ's place, skulking around comedy clubs hither and yon, and sitting through choppy VODcasts at Sam Seder's site, while our Two Jewish Heroes got screwed over by AAR again and again.

Perhaps it's because right now Air America is but a fading shadow, with only lowlights like Lionel and the earnest but dull Ron Kuby as marquee properties, now that Rachel Maddow is hitting the big time, and who knows how long she'll be able to handle a three-hour radio show (even a pre-recorded one) and a nightly network prime-time show of her own. Or perhaps it's the realization that Maddow is the last personality left on Air America with a following. But whatever the reason, the Powers that Be have decided to swallow their pride and Do What's Necessary to bring Marc Maron back to New York where he belongs.

And so, today, we learned that on Monday, August 25, at 3:00 PM Eastern Time, Messrs. Maron and Seder will be bringing their own unique brand of bickering, ferociously smart, often hilariously funny, "Hey Kids, Let's Put On a Show" video back to Air America (sort of). The VODcast will be shown at AirAmerica.com. There will be sketches, man-on-the-street interviews, political commentary and interviews, large doses of Teh Funny, and even Brendan McDonald from the old Morning Sedition board crew is back to produce the show. Maron is coming back to Astoria, with two of the Original Astoria Cats (my money's on Moxie and Monkey), returning to Where It All Began.

The show will run daily at 3 PM Eastern Time starting Monday, and will continue at least through the election. There are enough Maron and Seder fans out here that Sam's site was getting royally clobbered during today's VODcast, where the new endeavor was announced, so I have no doubt that with precious little marquee talent still in the stable, and two guys with some of the most loyal fans in radio, that this little venture into the future of broadcasting is going to succeed.

Presumably the show will be available as Video On Demand, so you'll be able to watch it any time; more on that is it develops. As this year's presidential campaign gets sillier and more trivial than ever, you'll want to have ready access in order to keep your sanity.

Maggie was very interested in this development today:

...and wanted to IM Sam until I told her we don't have IM:

...and thought that the talk about the PUMA crazies was about cats:

Seder v. Maron; Friday 8-22-08, 3 PM EST, LIVE! Be There!!

...Or check here for the video on demand (that's vod, baby!) of today's big announcement show (and you can always look at the evolution of past shows there too!)

Other reasons to be cheerful: Last day of the Olympics is so soon I can feel it!...God, was that 99% boring!
Driftglass dismantles Bill Kristol to hilarious effect here. Be sure to check the Driftglass Word Chipper (tm) in action!
Oh, I'm sure there are two or three other reasons, including the fall-like weather in the New York mornings, but Ive got to go and move the car.... meantime, here is a little bit of Drifty on Kristol:

Once he stood upon the brink of a brave, new Neocon order: so close to Wingtard Heaven he could almost smell the sweet perfume of a billion scary brown people (who just happened to be squatting on top of Our God Damn Oil) being nuked to shadows and dust, almost hear the triumphal march of Blackwater storm troopers merrily rounding up the last of the hippies. Negroes, queers, uppity wimmin and ACLU card-holders, almost touch the headstone over the grave where he buried the American Middle Class, and almost taste George Bush’s golf shoe on the throat of every other nation on Earth.

And he did it all by waving his little pen around.

Y'know, if you take away the ability to write (and/or read) this could be about W hisself.

See ya at 3!

c/p RIPCoco

Marc Maron Plays a Stealthy Week at NYC's Comedy Cellar...

Last night I had the good fortune to catch Marc Maron at a sold out show at the Comedy Cellar in downtown Manhattan. It turns out that he's been doing a stealthy set or so there nightly for a week, with no word to the fan base. Its a pretty good lineup nightly there, though I am not the one to ask about stand up. I'm a fan of the Andy Kaufman brand of Mighty Mouse comedy, Morning Sedition bits, and very old Saturday Nite Live....I had a moment with Steven Wright's comedy but then I got sick of it very quickly.

Maron; call it a workout , call it laziness on his part that it didn't make it to the mailing list, call it sets too short to be crowed about as full shows...but then, the denizens of the comedy cellar certainly are on top of things because the venue has been sold out for early and late shows for the entire week. Maybe that's just the state of things in NYC nightlife, but on a Sunday at 10 we stood outside the club and people were coming by to ask if they could get reservations for the 11! Comedy Cellar is a well established place that holds only 160 people, and the lineup was pretty stellar, if you're into the stand-up thing, and its very old home for a road warrior like Maron who seems to know everyone everywhere that I've seen him! As always, I like the camaraderie around the clubs and ensembles often more than I like the stand-ups themselves.



Yeah, its been a while since I saw Maron do stand up, and Ive got to say that with everything happening in my life it was good to kick back with some of the funny (and some of the less-funny of the other comics sharing the bill with him, but oh well....)
As usual, Marc was funny and warm, and as usual also the material he does is ever evolving with the issues and where hes at emotionally...Hes got a great bit on McCain and what a crazy fuck he is...and also a good line on the gaze of Obama, and how hes seemingly looking at ...something...out there....
But the underlying theme in that short set was that you'd really have to be socially and politically retarded to be undecided between the crazy old fuck and the intelligent young black man. The crowd roared in agreement with this...Marc went on to wonder when McCain would blow (knowing anger management issues intimately)...and that crowd reaction is a good thing. I hope that he gets the same reaction with this material in bigger settings such as Seattle's Bumbershoot festival next week where he will be appearing with the Satiristas; call it an informal poll.

Not that the liberal comedy crowds in NYC and Seattle are much to gauge the mood of the nation by, but I have to say that we all seem to be holding onto each other and holding our collective breaths about how close this race might be...and if its close, then what does that say about us? "Retarded" (tm Maron)?...yup! Cowards? Yup! Racist? Uh-huh!...and really, Anti-American! If McCain gets into office it will be the most unAmerican act ever committed by the American people as a whole...because what is going on, and has been going on here for the past 7.5 years is criminal and against everything we stand for.
...anyway, I hear that Burlington,VT might be a good place to build the self sufficient bunker for the next 8 years if McCain gets in....next stop Canada.



In other news, Sam Seder will be traveling to Denver to cover the Democratic Convention for Air America Radio. He promises interviews, video, audio and all sorts of good stuff...maybe even a week of Maron v. Seder, which is my absolute favorite show these days. It will be good to hear from Sammy, (and Marc too, of course,) as it seems that we've had a dearth of reasonable, intelligent, liberal talk...or maybe I just haven't been listening enough...Air America went from a 90% fantastic and groundbreaking lineup to the polar opposite, screwing people over along the way, in its short life.

When Air America began it gave hope to alot of us who felt totally frustrated and insane with this rogue leadership and their obvious lies. It was such a relief to find sane, funny voices that understood, and through that we found each other. The netroots is nothing to scoff at, folks. It may not be a huge landslide in the popular vote, but it is an active force of many intelligent (and some less so,) people who have the drive and desire to effect change. We're entering a time of hope and possibly empowerment now, which will only be effective if we quit turning on one another and keep our eyes on the prize. Its at a time like this that I treasure the likes of Maron and Seder in whatever form I can get them...because I'm even more disillusioned with not only the leadership but especially my own party. I've clung to the ideals of the spoken word, in whatever form its taken with the technology out there, because it made sense to me, and because I needed an outlet...anyone who knows me, knows that I have alot of words to let out! Going forward, I am again reminded by last night's show how important this discourse remains...
I look forward to anything that these guys have coming up...
Tune in for the next Seder V. Maron live and join the chat! Its a fantastic meeting of two minds that are quirky, tuned in, smart as all get-out, funny, and just plain fun! Watch this space for dates and times...sometime during the convention we should get an installment, and then, as usual, we play it by ear,depending on everyone's schedule, (but rule of thumb is sometime Tuesday around noon-ish eastern time. But if you want to see the evolution of a hilarious and technologically groundbreaking workout of chemistry, intellect, and really funny glitches (especially Maron's reactions to them,) check here for the archives. Its not always smooth, and its certainly not perfect...but there is something very real there that works beautifully....and I, for one, want more!


c/p RIPCoco

What on earth makes them think anyone would be interested in this?

I'm pretty much finished with Air America at this point. I've written to cancel my premium subscription after four years, I no longer listen, and I sure as hell don't download podcasts. When they gave the 3-6 slot to Ron Kuby instead of either Sam Seder or Marc Maron, and pretty much told Seder that he can stay on and edit the web site for the health insurance, I decided it was time to say sayonara.

Oh, there's Rachel Maddow, of course, but the presence of Maddow in David Gregory's chair last night on Race to the White House pretty much told us how things are going to shake out in the post-Russert era at the National Broadcasting Company -- so I would guess her days with Air America are numbered too. After all, how can you keep them down on the farm after they've seen 30 Rock?

Today, Air America, the network that once gave us Morning Sedition, The Majority Report, and yes, even The O'Franken Factor, is now the home for a bunch of old local New York guys and a syndicated outlet for Thom Hartmann.

So given the dessicated skeleton that is Air America, what makes Mark Green think anyone is going to want to go on an Air America cruise? I've been looking at cruises myself lately, and in fact Mr. Brilliant and I were planning to take one to Canada and New England in early fall, were it not for our realization that 1200 bucks a head, what with fuel charges, taxes and all, before you even have a drink or do anything, was a shitload of money to spend to have one of your ports be Boston, which is a four-hour drive.

A number of years ago, Salon did a cruise that featured the likes of Ann Richards, Joe Wilson, and Joe Conason -- which for my money sounded a lot more appealing than Lionel, David Bender, and Mark Green. Yes, Rachel Maddow and Thom Hartmann are scheduled, but if Rachel gets the 6 PM anchor spot on MSNBC, somehow I don't think she's going to be interested in spending a week on a cruise ship with the little old people from Canarsie who followed Lionel over to Air America from WOR, only to find that he isn't even carried in New York.

But here's what shows just how clueless Mark Green is about Air America: one of the "guest speakers" (the other being Ron Reagan) is none other than Mr. 0-for-8 himself, Bob Shrum.

Now, I hang around in progressive circles, and I don't know anyone who would be jumping up and down at the prospect of paying $1472 for an inside cabin to rub elbows with Bob Shrum and Mark Green when you can take the same damn cruise on the same ship a week earlier and get a suite through cruise.com for $1254. I understand that these theme cruises are always more expensive, but it's one thing to spend a bunch of money for the Blues Cruise, where at least you'll be on ship with the likes of Etta James, Taj Mahal, Derek Trucks and Susan Tedeschi, and John Hammond. It's quite another to spend a bunch of money to listen to Bob Shrum regale you with his exciting tales of managing his way into eight losing presidential campaigns.

It is just this kind of tin ear that Mark Green has shown in his entire tenure of running Air America. In fact, there hasn't been a soul other than perhaps Jon Sinton and Doug Kreeger and whoever booked the original talent, who HAS had a clue. Somehow I suspect that during a recession, they're going to have trouble attracting people to this little soiree.

Bits and Pieces from a Scattered Week....

Reasons to be Cheerful:

This week, Wednesday the 28th through Friday the 30th, Marc Maron once again takes the microphone at Air America Radio, in the American Afternoon slot from 3PM to 6PM. Stream it live from the Air America page, or get the podcast there...or spring for Replay A/V
and go crazy saving all kinds of stuff that you always miss and wish you could grab for your MP3! NO matter what you do, drop a note to pcollin@airamerica.com and let him know what you think about the programming and who should be on the station that was at one point arguably, the voice of the liberal movement in America.

Don't forget the Seder V. Maron VoD-cast, which happens live most Tuesdays at 11AM EST, and is available on demand here. It's an evolving, technologically glitchy, hilarious romp through the minds of two of the most brilliant political and comic minds out there.

Whats up with Seder and his jack-of-all trades tenuous perch at AAR? Who knows? Its hard to believe that pcollin at air america dot com would let slip such a multi talented and reliable guy, not to mention a great broadcaster, but I've seen them do worse...much worse, so....I just don't feel anything anymore except sadness for the end of something that was great at one time and the real inability of any number of new management characters to do even a couple of right things. I guess we'll see.

In interesting news:

Scott McClellan is the latest rat to jump ship, with a book that basically throws the Bush White House under the bus. So, when does the criminal investigation start? Is Rove even gonna answer his subpoena in that other matter? Its nice sometimes to see how predictable rats are when a ship is going down. It adds back a little of that lost universal order.

Meanwhile:

Our beloved hero, Brad, of Bradblog, posted a little funny here
from The Satirical Political Report, which claims that the Supreme Court has blocked reruns of HBO's Recount (which has Emmy buzz)...He really had me going for a second there as I was thanking God that I DVRed the thing because of the constant interruptions around here....But, honestly, the real reason to be cheerful is that Brad is out there traveling round and reporting back the most incredible information on what is happening on the ground across the country regarding our voting rights, our voting machines, and if our votes are really being counted. This is some of the most important work going on in the country right now, and this guy should have a mandatory viewing, prime time TV show, right in between Merv Griffin's Crosswords and Are you Smarter Than a Fifth Grader, just to make sure that Americans are getting this...it could be like one of those Most Wanted shows and maybe at one point the villagers would pick up their torches and it could become the best reality show ever!

In news of another of the most important jobs out there right now, the one person who has gotten a book on the shelves that dares to pull the curtain back on old man McCain, author, blogger, pundit, Cliff Schecter, is appearing Friday, may 30th, from 6-8PM, in Washington, DC at a book discussion of the fantastic and revealing, The Real McCain (available on the RIPCoco front page Amazon widget or the front page Brilliant Amazon Widget, meaning that we endorse it and suggest it!) The discussion is being held at the AFL-CIO headquarters, on 815 16th St., NW (RSVP: John Goltz at 202-508-6938.)
if I were able to get there, I would SO be ensconced at the George Hotel and eating one of those Chinese salads from the downstairs food court at the station, then wandering round the hollow mall on the hard mud field wondering what the fuck went wrong, before running over to the AFL-CIO for what promises to be a revealing look at a complex guy amongst the denizens of DC, where the air is permeated with politics in this most interesting political season ever...(and maybe somewhere out there someone might find that key for Maron.)
My suggestion meantime: Buy this book! Read this book! Give it as a gift! Many gifts! Your favorite republicans/independents/undecideds/Hillary Clinton supporters need this book! Check for it at your local bookstores and make sure its right up front on the current events table!

Look, just because McCain has the faded aura of hero doesn't mean that he doesn't have problems and skeletons...and it doesn't mean that he is qualified to run this country, considering what he's saying, what his record is, and the whitewash job on his health. Just because he lived through some of the worst tragedies that come from war, doesn't mean that we shouldn't do the necessary research before half the country considers handing him the football...right? You'd think that they would want to do this research themselves, but they don't seem to want to know.

Worried about things? Have trouble believing anything at all? Lost your religion? Here ya go:

Fuck it: The Ultimate Spiritual Way check it! and then sign up to receive a regular Fuck It thought in your email!

John C. Parkin argues that saying Fuck It is a spiritual act:
That it is the perfect western expression of the eastern ideas of letting go, giving up and finding real freedom by realizing that things don’t matter so much (if at all).

This is The Fuck It Way

...And finally, 19 days and counting till the launch of No Ignoring!, Mike Boettcher's ground-breaking Iraq/Afghanistan project that will span 15 months and show us, up close and on the ground, in our soldier's own words, and as a fly on the wall in the major war zones that we are responsible for, what is happening. Lets bring awareness and personal sacrifice back to the concept of war, and see if some sort of ownership doesn't give us some pause when it comes to escalation of any sort. Lets see how the soldiers really feel about what is going on over there. This is going to be an interesting unfolding project with many arms, and I will be following it closely as it kicks off and heads out to war for a tour of duty exactly the length of the actual soldiers. Be careful guys! Keep your heads down!



And, speaking of war...The old man just keeps talking:
"By the way, I will never surrender in Iraq, my friends....and we are winning!" That was John McCain today in a speech in Denver on nuclear non-proliferation, in which he tried to frame himself as the more JFK-like candidate, (he was interrupted by anti-war protesters 3 times!)
Speak for yourself Bozo! You can never surrender all you want, wandering round the 8 mansions talking to the portraits of dead beer scions and their patrician wives, you can rail on and on to your lobby buddies before nodding off in your own drool, or tell it to you oncologist, but don't include anymore of our American troops in your plans, you befuddled old man.

Joementum Lieberman is gonna HOST that Hagee Rapture ready Throw down, July 22nd!! What a sick fuck Joey is. First he moved back to Stamford (my town,) where all his own friends and supporters hate him for lying (I'm talking about a 180 on the war, just 2 weeks before the election, and then another 180 back right after!) and then he embraces a guy that is so putrid, so horrible, as to be unbearable...talk about self-hating! This is the pinnacle of craziness. Earth to Joe: they only want you to lure the coming rapture...then they will dump you! Are YOU ready for the rapture?
Christians United for Israel, indeed! Kish mir en toches!



Which leaves me speechless...what else could anyone say ever again?



c/p RIP Coco

McCain's "Spiritual Guide"Speaks....The Real McCain Grows Clearer Every Day

...and what he has to say does not promote any agenda that I want to be a part of. I can guarantee that if the M$M were covering this that McCain would be out on his ass, because this is representative of the worst fringe, hate-speak there is. Thanks to Brave New Films, we have the piece below about the incredible Pastor Rod Parsley who has been and continues to be an important part of McCain's belief system.
Even if this were a way to approach a belief system, there is no human way that we could somehow "defeat Islam," or bring an end to one of the largest religious groups in the world. Rather, shouldn't we think like intelligent people and perhaps try to sort out who is a radical and who is a normal person? I suppose that if we did that we might have to look at Christian radicals like, um, the Pastor Parsley himself!
How could McCain ever be president with people like this around him. Why doesn't he renounce these crazies? This is what we need to start talking about right away!



David Bender interviews Cliff Schecter, author of The Real McCain here:

Buy this book folks...its a must read!

h/t Sam Seder for the audio!

c/p RIPCoco

Sam Seder and Marc Maron; Air America's Wrestlemania Meets American Idol. What if You Threw a Contest and No-One Came?

Welcome to our very own American Idol-ish...sorta contest...In which we vote for our favorite voice of the left while Howie Mandell holds a phone up and excitedly makes offers from some "banker" dude. Vote early and vote often, kids! Stream it live and leave comments at Air America, (and check out the Sammycam, while you can, here. For a short version of the long story of the Sammer look here.) And there is always the comments accepted by PCollins@airamerica.com which may or may not ever register. Who knows? For someone who earned his chops in interactive media, he is certainly not all that interactive, even in a got your mail, thanks for the comment. auto-mail sort of way.

Such is the pathetic state of one of the very few outlets for the liberal voice left in this country. To watch the unraveling continue is heart wrenching...to see a "contest" where talented, passionate voices are akin to sheep to the slaughter (and Simon Cowell's name is even mentioned in the mailer advertising this little game,) and into the corporate grinder of another possibility that looks to be much like the last possibility was...well, lets just say that hope is not winning out anymore....and if the Whoopie Goldberg Happy Show doesnt sound feasible to soothe the masses, well, think again.

First of all, I should say that the choices are a little uncertain...who is actually in the running here? I don't know for sure. In the wake of the Randi Rhodes debacle, the new suits need to fill the 3-6PM slot, and its not enough for them that they have, under their very noses, the most shuttled around, loyal, and excellent, Sam Seder, but they have felt compelled to try out some celebrity hosts who couldn't possibly want the gig, and who have pretty much sucked so far. Just to recap for the latecomers; we have heard from Roseanne Barr, Joy Behar, Richard Belzer, and still to come is the duo of Ron Kuby and Ron Reagan, which might only be half bad, but, hell, all things equal why not just give Kuby a show late night or very early morning somewhere, not prime drive-time, fer' Christ's sake, and be done with it?

This week, our heroes, Marc Maron and Sam Seder, share the slot on alternating days. This whole thing is seemingly an audition for Maron, but there is no comparison between him and any of the others, except Seder, who is from the same crowd of comedians and comedy circuit. Their long relationship lends itself to a very nice shorthand and knowing grin sort of back and forth that works. Maron used to think that the two of them together might be too "Jewey," but I don't get that as much as I get their long relationship as very different brothers who approach things differently, but have the same jumping off point.

They each have a different approach which has its points, with Maron leaning more towards culture and variety with politics thrown in, while Seder is straight up politics with reflections on the work-a-day life we, most of us, share. Maron does more sketch comedy and is more inside his own head, which either reflects our collective neurosis, or just seems funny to the more balanced of us out there. Both are funny and real, and more importantly, both are Air America originals, and are actually what was that hopeful, new, edgy voice. When either of them appears on the network, the fans come out in droves. This is a no brainer, and why a competition is being set up is either high concept from around a conference table with communications school grads who think they have some creative edge, or some money making priming of the pump. Maybe celebrities impress advertisers? Only so long as listeners tune in.

The idea of audience input in this decision is quaint, to say the least, to those of us who have attempted to communicate with that organization in large numbers only to be ignored. In fact, the newsletter that broached this little experiment didn't even specify how one would vote for one or the other, and since, as far as I can see, the contest is between Maron, Seder, and possibly Kuby, I suppose they could be counting streams, or emails or...it just doesn't seem like they planned it too well. So, in case there was a question over in the home office, yes we want Maron back on the air however we can get him and within his own west coast constraints. Yes we want Seder in a 5 day per week slot. No we don't want any of your celebrities.


In any case, Sam Seder hosted Monday the 5th, and will host again on Wednesday the 7th. Marc Maron will host Tuesday the 6th, Thursday the 8th, and Friday the 9th. We were to hear a tag team of the two of them on Friday, but some glitch prevented it...too bad; these two are excellent together in their weekly VOD-cast, here, on Tuesdays at 11AM,EST.



My favorite Air America Radio sweatshirt says "...because we couldn't make this stuff up..." across the chest. The story of AAR will no doubt be told beyond what we know from the Left of the Dial documentary, which was full of hope at the raw talent and creativity of those early days of the creation of what was to be a strong voice for the left. Late last week on Hardball, the bland Mark Green, third "owner" of AAR, compared a John McCain presidency to Herman's Hermits; "Second Verse, Same as the First," with a stiff chuckle and nod to "pop culture." I was struck by how far removed he is from the current of modern society and what the meaningful touchstones of what remains of our culture might be, outside of the incestuous world of NYC politics, and the level that he just cant seem to get past. When I think of this guy and his ilk, I get a vision of furniture and lamps covered in plastic and slick young guys standing by the ropes of Studio 54, never to get in because of those damned bridge and tunnel shoes and gold chains. Its not something that I find necessarily bad; its a culture all its own, and a Brooklyn upbringing that I understand because I also grew up there. But it is like a time capsule and there is a sort of mentality and taste implied there, born of Tony Manero, rented limos, and power hungry failed politicians, picked last for the team time and again. New York City is a hard place to make your mark, and at some point maybe its best to stop trying so damned hard and look at the reality of whats in front of you.

The news that "new owners" were once again climbing aboard the sinking ss. AAR gave me little hope, especially when I heard that Green was being kept on. Still, I heard from a couple of different people on the inside that the new group seemed pretty smart and that there might yet be hope. I don't know; hope seems so distant these days in light of a paralyzed senate, unable to effect any real change without enough votes or enough balls to even speak up about criminals in the White House... and the infighting in the party which doesn't seem to have any sort of logical basis....the partisanship within the democratic party which was so clearly reflected in AAR management.... So, I didn't expect much, especially when the network seemingly set up and then took down Randi Rhodes. The whole episode was a horrible example of what is wrong with an entity like AAR being run by a bunch of pseudo politicians who are really home shopping moguls, posturing and posing as they try to figure out how to present the "left" side of things in as palatable and soothing a way as possible, so as to make money while appearing PC. Start-up media outlets seldom make money in the first 5 years. Outlets with a controversial message tend to need ongoing financial support; just ask Rupert Murdoch.

Whatever is going on over there resembles the divide in the democratic party in that someone's idea of how to fill a slot left empty by the network's biggest draw who is a concise, on point, broadcaster, that knows her stuff, is with guest "celebrity hosts" who are not only a little old and soft, but not especially up on the issues, while popular originals stand by. The messages from each of these categories of hosts is so completely different as to be almost representative of the differences between candidates.

AAR would be lucky if any of the original Air Americans or the celebrity guests would even consider a job with an outlet with this track record. I guess that performers, commentators, and the like are every bit as masochistic as their fans, and the message has to get out one way or another. I have no doubt that the cream will rise to the top here or elsewhere, and if this is where I part ways with AAR, then so be it. I lost my ability to care a long time ago....but I will stream the show...I will vote equally for Maron and Seder...and I hope that when this thing is over that AAR might be able to give a nod toward mistakes made, and start to rebuild what was once a pretty damned great line-up.

c/p RIPCoco

Air America...What Could They be Thinking?...Sign to Let AAR Know That We Want Sam Seder on 5 Days Per Week!

Brave New Films has set up a petition to let Air America know that we want Sam Seder to have a 5 day per week show. Go HERE and sign. Then write to pcollins@airamerica.com and let him know what you think about the lineup, the celebrity guest hosts, and what this country needs as far as the liberal voice goes.

I'm not down on Richard Belzer, who is filling in from 3-6 PM this week in Randi Rhodes sold slot, but the problem with him is alot like the problem with Jerry Springer or Lionel; there is a lack of real reporting and deep knowledge of the issues there. They may be able to get guests or liberal callers, but they don't stretch our awareness of the issues much past what is on the normal news or in the paper. If you want a talker who is just there to lull you from a left sided viewpoint, then I can understand liking these guys. But of you want to be challenged, to think, to find out more about the surface story, and to find out what you can do about it, then Sam Seder is better for the network.

When the Green brothers took over Air America and put Lionel in the morning slot that had previously been Sam's, there was talk that the feeling was that Sam was too substantive and that there was a desire for...er...less substance in the morning. Now, already, Morning Sedition had proven that wrong as the numbers were good and climbing when the plug was pulled on that for no other reason than that one person didn't like it. And I would also say that the fact that there are a range of news programs in morning drive time disproves that as well. I think that its completely disrespectful to the audience to say that they should have less substance in that time slot. I suppose that a morning zoo with content would be nice...but one would have to rebuild that from the ashes of bad management decisions.

The thing is, that where maybe Randi Rhodes was maybe too wild for the new owners, and not enough of a Hillary soldier, (and good luck trying to find anyone who is anymore,)or they didn't like her contract, or whatever it was, to replace her with Richard Belzer who is a bit of a snooze, but might be fine in a night slot, is gonna alienate any listeners who haven't followed Randi but who tune in for a peppy afternoon show with a little anger and energy. I just cant imagine how the casting is done over there in the bowels of AAR, but the management of said casting and the way that the very talented Sam Seder has been treated, is deplorable if one wants to go for continuity and keep the audience that they have.

And in a nod to the brilliance of the late great Morning Sedition, Belzer had a Kent Jones character call in. Unless management is renewing Kent's contract, I find it in pretty strange taste...though I am not in that loop at all, so who knows what goes on...but the thing is, Belzer is not a sketch comedian of the sort that played those sketches originally. So the comparison is brutal, and the sketch didn't make alot of sense...and as much as Belzer is held in high regard in the liberal community, the comedy community, and the NYC community, he just didn't hit it right, leaving those of us who knew the origins of that sketch shaking our heads, and those who didn't wondering what the fuck that was. There is a need for more of the funny on AAR, but digging this stuff out of the vault and trying to recreate it is not the way to go. That's the recycled funny and it doesn't work unless the originals are called in to reunite with these characters; to do it right, you've got to build it new from the ground up, and with some very talented people who have the time to work together so its not so strange and stilted.

I suppose I'm pretty well finished with AAR. I wrote a pretty good second letter to Phillipe Collins, and I signed the petition....I don't know how much I can even care anymore...and as long as Mark Green is in on these decisions, and I keep seeing his face on Hardball and the like, I get an icky, sticky, smarmy feeling about the whole thing. The edgy coolness is all gone now...you only have to look at Green and know his history in NYC to hear that bell toll. So, I'm expecting the worst, and Ill be happily surprised if they do anything that makes sense. But we are not in an age of sense, and I can see that there is gonna be a time soon where all of the media content out there is going to be cobbled together by subscription, and delivered by WiFi (wait...get this...I ordered an 80 gig Zune!...more on that as it develops.)I really hope that Sam is offered a good, 5 day per week slot, with some job security, but I also know that he is so talented and so interested in the media of the future that not being saddled with AAR could be a good thing for him too. So, in the long view its exciting to see what he might do...its just that in the short term its going to be a real bummer not to have him navigating the decline and fall of the Bush empire, and the election and cleanup of whatever comes next. This is a season that I would hate to go through without his voice and point of view out there with me.

c/p RIPCoco

Why I miss Air America, and why this week just makes it worse

There's really not much I can add to Melina's excellent post from last night detailing the Air America situation and her spot-on recommendations for finally undoing the damage of three years of criminally inept mismanagement. But what Air America has meant to me, and to people like me, over the past four years, is something that I don't think the parade of ants in suits who have marched through its offices during that time have ever really understood.

Back in the days before George Bush invaded Iraq, I used to listen to Richard Bey and Steve Malzberg, who had the WABC drive-time gig in New York. Bey is a sort of moderate, perhaps slightly left-of-center, calm presence who offset the screeching of the crazed wingnut Malzberg, who saw everything through the prism of Israel. In terms of AM talk radio, Bey was then the closest thing we had to a progressive voice in New York, except for the odd hours when you'd find Lynn Samuels ranting in her stuck-in-1969-Pacifica way. Oh, sure, I would listen to Randi Rhodes and Mike Malloy and Neil Rogers on ieAmerica or any of the other various online streaming outlets that were available to me before my employer got Websense and blocked all streaming audio. I remember Neil Rogers taking calls from Florida voters reporting strange occurrences during the midterm elections in 2002. But until there is ubiquitous Wi-fi, and an internet radio becomes what an AM radio used to be, streaming lacks the "turn it on and it's there" ease of AM radio.

Like it or not, the AM (and to a lesser extent, the FM) dial is where radio still lives.

But while the idea for Air America had been kicking around for a while, it wasn't until the network had a start date and a lineup that I started believing it would happen. Mr. Brilliant was off from work that week, and he was right there when Al Franken signed on at noon on March 31, 2004, on the new flagship station of Air America, WLIB.

It's hard to describe what it felt like the next morning, when I turned on WLIB and heard the snippet from "Can't Stop" by the Red Hot Chili Peppers that to this day and forevermore I associate with Morning Sedition. I had no idea who Marc Maron was at that point, but I knew that the play on NPR's staid morning show meant that something new and snarky was about to happen from 6-9 AM.

In those early days, Air America had a kind of "Hey, kids, let's put on a radio network!" feel to it as the various shows fumbled their way towards some kind of cohesiveness. Morning Sedition jettisoned Sue Elicott, which while it added to the unfettered testosterone of the show, allowed Maron and the staff of ferociously talented writers room to breathe and create a kind of morning zoo for snarky liberal intellectuals. Al Franken fared better with his female sidekick, Katherine Lanpher, who was the perfectly and effortly disciplined foil for Franken's tendency to ramble and whose glorious laugh fed his better efforts. But even the shows that I didn't think worked all that well, such as Unfiltered, in which Chuck D couldn't manage most days to get out of bed in time to even show up, Lizz Winstead was less funny than she was in her Daily Show days, and Rachel Maddow wasn't the relaxed, funny pro we see today, but instead was the kind of progressive utopian with no sense of humor that Marc Maron would go on to ridicule, managed to find their loyal followers.

With an on-air stable of talent that included few people with any actual radio experience, we were able to listen to their on-the-job training. This was not everyone's cup of tea, as it often resulted in things like listening to Janeane Garofalo screeching or playing out her issues with her conservative father Carmine on our time. But it was new, and it was fresh, and it was different, and damn it, it finally spoke to US -- after a decade that saw mindless grinning mouthbreathers like Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity and Neal Boortz and Mark Levin suck up all the AM frequencies.

Because Arbitron never takes into account web streaming and podcasting, it's impossible to know how many people were actually listening, but it was a lot more than the conventional meme of "Progressive Radio Fails Because No One Wants It" would have you believe.

This morning I heard Mike Doughty's song 27 Jennifers on the radio and it reminded me of the time I went into the city at 5:30 AM to catch a live broadcast of Morning Sedition at City Bakery. Doughty was the musical guest that day. It was June 2005 and the show was in a perfect groove, with Mark Riley playing the perfect Margaret Dumont to Maron's Groucho-Marx-on-Meth; Jim Earl embodying the various Milfingtons, and Kent Jones' southern dittohead Lawton Smalls bit having been honed to its perfectly and exactingly disciplined structure that always somehow felt ad-libbed. Catching Morning Sedition live was like watching the best jazz concert you've ever seen, in which everyone is in a perfect groove, they know what they want to play, but they're so together that when one member goes off into an improvisation, the other band members go off similarly, and it just magically works.

That day I saw Doug Kreeger and Jon Sinton walking around observing the crowd, and it was so clear that they GOT IT. They understood what Morning Sedition was about. They understood that while Maron can be the biggest, highest-maintenance pain in the ass in the known universe, he had clearly tapped into the collective consciousness of a sizable group of people. They knew what they had was magic. What they didn't have was the job of programming director. And when that job went to Danny Goldberg, he went about dismantling everything that people loved about Air America. The first show to go was Unfiltered, which he replaced with Jerry Springer, who paid for air time. Now I'm not one of those people who hated Springer's show. I thought that because Springer appealed to the uninformed idiots who watch trash television, having him as a progressive radio host gave him a unique opportunity to reach them. But it was a sign of things to come, because Goldberg's next move was to cancel Morning Sedition in December of 2005.

Air America has been plagued by bad management since day one, and it's the company's employees, the on-air talent, and the audience that have paid the price. What far too few of the incarnations of Air America management have understood is what a life preserver the network has been to those of us who have had our eyes open through the horror that has been the Bush years. I realize that for the suits in the executive suite, it's about delivering eardrums to advertisers, but these nimrods that have marched through this company over the past four years, stuck in an era when it's all about the AM ears, have never realized that Air America's audience has been just as much about streaming and podcasts as AM radio. They have never understood that the audience was not only far larger than they realized, but also ferociously loyal; but loyal not to "the corporation" but to the bigger concept of progressive talk radio, and to the on-air talent that brought the news, the perspective, and the funny to our ears.

This blog may have given a disproportionate amount of attention to Marc Maron and Sam Seder over the past few years, but it's rare that radio personalities make themselves as accessible to listeners as these two men have. Randi Rhodes may have always said "I love you more" to her listeners, but aside from gay men, you never really believed it. But in very different ways, Sam and Marc have crossed the 4th wall between on-air personality and listener.

Marc Maron has done it, as he has throughout his standup career, by using comedy and his radio riffs as a kind of personal therapy. When he intersperses his unique take on political issues with riffs on his anger management problems, his volatile marriage, his past drug use, his cats, his issues about weight, he's opened himself up to the people he calls his "stalkers" in a way even most of our own friends don't. Of course Maron, whose self-loathing puts your garden variety sufferer from low self-esteem to shame, seems to want no part of any club that would have him as a member, and so he has often greeted the die-hards such as Melina and I, Kristapea and her gift packages, Gypsy and her recipes, Sean the intellectual truck driver, and Brian the would-be songwriter from Everett, Washington, with a sizable dollop of fear and loathing along with the gratitude and appreciation.

But Sam Seder is another story entirely. Here is a man, a comedy writer and sometime actor previously best known as the guy who didn't swallow his food in a Sex and the City episode, who found himself playing the rational foil to an increasingly unhinged Janeane Garofalo in Air America's early days. But unlike Garofalo, who never really adapted well to radio, Seder worked hard, improved his delivery, did his homework, and created his own style and his own following via his web site. No one can ever say that Sam Seder hasn't played well with others. When they cancelled The Majority Report, he moved seamlessly to the morning slot. When David Bernstein decided that a screechy-voiced Latino libertarian from New York who was his friend should have that slot, Seder kept his mouth shut, moved to his Sunday wasteland, and took his community with him. Over the last year, SamSederShow.com has become an online community in its own right, and on Tuesdays Seder and Marc Maron do a VODcast that provides a single hour of sanity for those of us who wake up every goddamn day wishing the old Air America was still around. Sam Seder is a good and decent man who has done nothing but bleed Air America blue for the last four years. He fills in when he's asked to, often at a moment's notice. He hasn't once complained. When he had to find out via Instant Messenger that his employer had once again kicked him in the teeth by choosing someone else to keep the 3-6 PM slot warm next week, you never heard him complain on the air.

I realize that it's the corporate way to defecate on one's employees and to think that all employees are interchangeable, but the way the suits may change but the crap stays the same just shows that it doesn't matter who sits in the executive suite at Air America anymore -- they still don't get it. The guys that did, like Kreeger and Sinton, were kicked to the curb. That dilettante hack Mark Green, whose rich brother bought him a radio network, continued to dismantle the network by turning it into Air Hillary. Charlie Kireker seemed to have promise, and even has an endorsement page on Barack Obama's site, but he too is all about the Benjamins. None of these guys get that progressive talk radio cannot simply be about getting people to buy John Cammuta's latest get rich quick scheme or some cream to make your dick bigger or some other cream that's guaranteed to get rid of the bags under your eyes if you just give them your credit card number so they can charge you every month.

No, it's about the community. It's about the unique bond that these radio novices created with those who listen to them. It's a bond that makes P.J. Sauter maintain the Morning Seditionists blog and set up online chat rooms where "Maronites" (I hate to call it "fans") can get together when Maron sits in for a vacationing Mike Malloy on NovaM Radio. It's a bond that led to Melina and I, a couple of iconoclastic middle-aged chicks sitting in a hotel lobby in Chicago last summer blogging like madwomen. It's a bond that has Brian from Everett, who sounds far more coherent these days than he did when he used Air America's voice mail to compose his wacky songs, still calling when Marc Maron is on. It's a bond that has "Fernando" helping Sam Seder out with technical issues with the VODCast. It's not about money, it's about people. It's about sustaining a community in an alienated world.

It's just that when the voices of this community are silenced on radio, the community is that much harder to sustain. And as James Wolcott said when Morning Sedition was cancelled, "a world without Sammy the Stem Cell is a world that might as well stop revolving."

Morning Sedition has been gone for over two years, and I miss it every single day. Sam Seder's show often doesn't make it to the podcast till two days later. Now Randi is gone, and if there's any justice in the world, Rachel Maddow will take over for David Gregory in the MSNBC 6 PM slot. And then everyone who made Air America something exciting and special will be gone.

In the recent stories about the lawsuit against the particle accelerator to be deployed in Switzerland this summer, the doomsayers talked about the possibility of "a tiny black hole, which, they say, could eat the Earth. Or it could spit out something called a 'strangelet' that would convert our planet to a shrunken dense dead lump of something called strange matter.'"

Air America, which was once vibrant and dynamic and entertaining, has turned into just that kind of shrunken, dense, dead lump.