Air America

[Donna Halper]

Not trying to defend AA, but National Review is a very conservative site 
which conveniently neglected to report that in several major dayparts, 
Limbaugh's numbers were down and so were Laura Ingraham's-- and that AA's 
were up in those dayparts.  That's the way the NY newspapers reported the 
story, including the conservative newspapers...I don't mind a right-wing 
critique of AA, which believe me, does some things that I wish they 
wouldn't do-- but the glee with which the National Review reporter 
discussed what he termed the failure of AA made me suspect he is not 
exactly an unbiased reporter.  AA has massive signal problems in NY, as 
they do in Boston, so it's still kind of like comparing apples and oranges 
to compare a 50,000 watt flame-thrower with suburban WLIB in NY (I used to 
work there-- I'm very familiar with the areas they cover, and the ones they 
don't).

That having been said, I spoke to several people at the Boston AA affiliate 
today and they are still trying to find a way to increase their signal or 
to at least cover more of the market-- it is not looking like that will 
happen any time soon, unfortunately.  (And I say 'unfortunately' because I 
really thing it's a good thing to have BOTH sides of current issues 
available for listeners to think about and discuss-- even though AA is 
having growing pains, it serves an important purpose and I hope it does 
become successful.)