I found the article, Air America, Home of Liberal Talk, Files for Bankruptcy Protection over at the NY Times surprising….
No, I’m not surprised they filed for protection, but more surprised that the NY Times didn’t elaborate more on changing usage patterns of Americans when it comes to getting political news.
According to Pew, 26 million Americans or 19% of the US 18+ population now get their political news from the internet on any given day. This new number from August 2006 exceeds the previous high of 21 million Americans from the Presidential Election of 2004 and far ahead of the 2002 mid-term elections (11 million). Does anyone else find it coincidental that Air America was started in Spring, 2004?
I’m sure their business plans were thoroughly vetted. Perhaps back in 2003/2004 when they put them together, their audience forecasts looked reasonable. I’m sure they also included a competitive snapshot of conservative radio ratings. Unfortunately, their audience is now online and in the form of political left wing blogs like Daily Kos.
Hitwise’s Bill Tancer wrote a post called Blogs Increasing Influence in Online Politics, showing that a much higher percentage of their political category receives news and links from blogs (5.3%) versus print news (4.3%). Bill also shows a list of top blogs and not surprising the top 5 are all left wing blogs. Charlene Li from Forrester also provides more data that shows 24% of GenYers read blogs and so does 12% of GenXers.
If I had to take a guess, I’d say that the audience for Air America is easily found. They aren’t listening to the radio or even Satellite Radio, they are online interacting with their community. If they are listening to commentary, it is being download onto their iPods, not tuning in via a static AM radio broadcast.
What would you rather do? Participate in a social community where people can link to your posts, drive traffic, post comments, and engage in dialog or listen to a one way conversation or a tough two-way version by waiting on hold for 20 minutes to talk with Al Franken for 30 seconds. As any political marketers knows, finding liberal democrats on a blog is like shooting fish in a barrel.
Of course, I’m just piecing together information and looking at it from my own blogging point of view. I’m sure the NY Times had valid reasons for not digging into where the audience is. But then again, maybe they were afraid they might find their audience elsewhere, too.
PardonMyFrench,
Eric
Eric, while you raise some good points, I’m not sure all Dems and/or liberals are into blogging, and they certainly weren’t two years ago when Air America went on the air. I think the liberal voice is reaching out through MoveOn.org., and I’m sure there are others. Although not a blog, MoveOn is using the web to get its message of activism out there, and lots of people I know receive it and respond.
Part of Air America’s problem may be the strength of the stations they’re on. Here in NY, for example, they’ve been on WLIB, which does not have a strong signal and barely reaches into the suburbs. Likewise, their outlet in Portland, Maine is small and pronbablyt relies on a strong wind to help get its signal out.
I hope they can keep it together, since they are getting another point of view across — one that we certainly won’t hear from the government. And, more importantly I think, they’re asking questions that most of the mainstream news media just don;’t seem to be asking.
David Reich
Eric,
No surprises here! Half tongue-in-cheek, here is my take:
Conservatives actively seek out voices confirming their points of view; Liberals prefer to hear their own voices, and don’t need other’s confirmation.
Lewis
Hi, Eric. Although you say there are countless liberal blogs in Cyberspace, there may be boundless liberal folks across the country who may not necessarily be attuned to this communications medium. It would be interesting to see Air America’s listener demographics to find out their median age. It is possible that it attracted middle-aged people who just may not be as plugged into the blog world. I’d also wonder why there are such large numbers of followers for conservative talk radio?
Either way, I hope Air America can come out of this intact. I think it’s important to have balance in any political communications channel.
All great comments thanks. I was very happy with that post and was wondering why I didn’t receive any comments.
Of course not every liberal is online, I was just surprised that the NY Times gave no mention to the fact a portion of their core audience is into blogs. I wish I had some demos to share too, but couldn’t find them. Unfortunately, I don’t have a research staff like MSM.
BTW – Lewis that was very funny.
Thanks again.
Eric
Agreed — funny comment, Lewis.
And Eric — you had plenty of comments! I just was out of the office for much of the morning and not around to approve them. (A necessary step, otherwise this blog is overrun with spam comments.) Sorry ’bout that!