Air America

[Roguish Lawyer]

Their counsel in the NY case appear to be quite low grade. Looks like a BS complaint to me. I don't believe they've made the required payments.

I find that liberals tend to be much more willing to breach agreements than conservatives.

[Radar Rider]

Awww, another failed liberal attempt to take to the airwaves. They couldn't even get the damn thing off the ground, and now they're going to court. Typical. What they can't win through popularity, they want to win through litigation. I think they'll be tossed on their asses.

[Intruder]

Originally posted by Radar Rider
... He titled his supposedly popular book "Rush Limbaugh is a big fat idiot". In and of itself an offensive title. I figure that if he had titled his book "Al Franken is a witty satirist", he'd have sold all of two or three copies. So what it comes down to is that the libs can't sell (to include their crappy radio) anything on its own merits. They must be offensive, rude and obnoxious in order to push their agenda. They claim to be "tolerant", but this nonsense proves that they're FOS.

Originally posted by Radar Rider
... What they can't win through popularity, they want to win through litigation. ...

Precisely.


The rational discourse of the left: "You're Stupid!!" I happened to catch Carville promoting his book on The Daily Show (more lib BS) a few months back. He gladly boasted a list in it which was a how-to on "pissing off Republicans." Do you see that fodder in ANY Coulter, Ingraham, Hannity, etc, book??

I also loved the irony from Franken when he said, "We're starting on 7 stations, which is 7 more than Limbaugh did." Aside from being bad at math, he doesn't see the irony that Rush essentially created the niche of talk radio as it stands today.... oh, and that little part where Rush didn't buy his way in...

But, think of it this way, WHEN Air America fails, at least they'll have NPR.

[lrd]

Nation's Gun Lobby Creating News Company
By SHARON THEIMER Associated Press Writer
WASHINGTON, Apr 16, 2004 (AP Online via COMTEX) --

The National Rifle Association is creating a news corporation, starting an Internet talk show and preparing to buy a radio station to speak about candidates and gun rights at election time despite new political ad limits.

The 4 million-member gun lobby, looking for the same legal recognition as mainstream news organizations, says it has already hired its first reporter. NRANews.com was to start online broadcasts Friday.

The NRA is taking the step to operate free of political spending limits, hoping to use unlimited donations known as soft money to focus on gun issues and candidates' positions despite the law's restrictions on soft money-financed political ads close to elections.

"Someone needs to show the court and the politicians how absurd their speech gag on the American public is," Wayne LaPierre, NRA executive vice president, told The Associated Press. "This is an act of defiance. But it's also in 100 percent compliance with the law."

LaPierre said the NRA is taking several steps to become a "legitimate packager of news" like newspapers and TV networks, including hiring Cam Edwards, a conservative talk-show host from Oklahoma City.

Started with a $1 million investment, the Internet programming features news briefs in the morning and at noon, followed by a three-hour afternoon "news show/talk show" with Edwards as host.

The group is setting up an NRA news corporation, possibly for profit, to run its new media operations. It is close to acquiring a radio station that will stream video of its NRA broadcasts to the Internet, LaPierre said.

The NRA plans to own a news operation "just as Disney owns ABC, just as GE owns NBC, just as Time Warner AOL owns CNN, and be the broadcast journalist equivalent of those outlets," LaPierre said.

"Who's to say they're any more legitimate on packaging news to the American public on firearms and hunting than the National Rifle Association, when in fact we've been in the news business longer than they have in terms of packaging news on those subjects?" he asked.

LaPierre has a point, one newspaper executive said. It is up to the reader to determine whether information "is credible, reliable and objective," said Stuart Wilk, president of Associated Press Managing Editors and managing editor of the Dallas Morning News.

"I would hope that American consumers would be properly skeptical about the objectivity of a group whose stated purpose is to lobby for a specific position - in this case about gun control and gun-related legislation and activities," Wilk said.

Larry Noble, head of the Center for Responsive Politics and former lead attorney for the Federal Election Commission, said that if the NRA operation has the trappings of a press entity - such as a radio outlet - it has a strong argument that it is one.

"The law does allow news media to editorialize and do commentary. It's the reason The New York Times can endorse candidates in its editorials," Noble said. "So in one sense they are not blazing new ground, but they are going into an area that's still forming and about which regulations are still being developed."

Whether Webcasts alone would make the NRA a press entity is a harder question, Noble said. Congress and the FEC haven't dealt with the intersection of the Internet and the media, he said, "and the lines are blurring."

The NRA and several other interest groups sued unsuccessfully to strike down campaign spending limits. The law, upheld in December by the Supreme Court, bans the use of corporate and labor union money for ads targeting congressional and presidential candidates close to elections. It also bars national party committees and federal candidates from raising so-called "soft money."

The law left political activity on the Internet largely unregulated and maintained a long-standing media exemption from political advertising rules for news and entertainment programming.

Mixing news and a political agenda is nothing new, said Gordon "Mac" McKerral, national president of the Society of Professional Journalists. When the nation's press was in its infancy, newspapers were vehicles to promote political agendas.

Now, again, "it's getting awful tough, I think, for people to sort out what's supposed to be objectively reported fact and opinion," he said.

The NRA has a huge potential audience. In addition to its 4 million members, there are 16 million licensed hunters and 80 million gun owners in the United States, LaPierre said.

[Radar Rider]

I'll tune in. As long as if it's after Rush....

[Roguish Lawyer]

http://www.drudgereport.com/flash8.htm

Liberal Radio Network AIR AMERICA In Deep Financial Crisis
Mon Jun 21 2004 11:20:16 ET

On March 30, the night before Air America went on the air, the liberal radio network threw itself a $70,000 party at Manhattan's hip Maritime Hotel. More than 1,000 guests, including Yoko Ono and Tim Robbins, drank red, white and blue vodka cocktails as they toasted the network's bid to challenge the dominance of conservative talk radio.

But behind the scenes, Air America was running out of money.

The WALL STREET JOURNAL reports on Monday: Several employees say they still haven't been reimbursed for the costs of attending the New York launch.
Many of Air America's investors and executives say they thought the network had raised more than $30 million, based on assurances from its owners, Guam-based entrepreneurs Evan M. Cohen and Rex Sorensen.

In fact, Air America had raised only $6 million, Mr. Cohen concedes. Within six weeks of the launch, those funds had been spent and the company owed creditors more than $2 million.
When the problems came to light, 'we realized that we had all been duped,' says David Goodfriend, the company's acting chief operating officer. Messrs.

Cohen and Sorensen say they didn't mislead anyone about the company's finances. They say they planned to invest more over time but didn't because of cultural differences with other managers.

Both resigned in early May. Five months before a presidential election, Air America should be on a roll. Instead, it's grappling with a financial crisis. Creditors are lined up at the door, and it is off the air in two big markets, Los Angeles and Chicago.

Developing...

[Bill Harsey]

cool

[tache18x]

Chuck D came to speak at my school (and yes they payed my tuition money to get him) a few months back. He was completely out of hand as he essentially mirrored the rhetoric terrorists use to justify thier actions against us. He's completely nuts.