Air America Grounded

All over Manhattan are post signs for Air America. The ad will ask if you are "BUSHED?" and have some former B-movie, TV star or comedian who now fashions him or herself as a political pundit with some smug look on their face as reason to tune in. Now, New York City is as liberal as any place in the country. It ranks right up there with Old Europe. If anything, this radio station touting anything and everything anti-Bush would be a hit in this town, right? Think again. Air America is a total flop no matter where in the country it airs. It doesn't matter if it is in Jesusland or New York City, no one is listening.

My thought (hope?) was it would be a total flop just because it was just another drop in the overflowing bucket of liberal bias in the media. The main reason for my theory is the success of Fox News. If you compare Fox News to the rest of the cable news stations (MSNBC, CNN, CNN Headline News) ratings-wise, Fox has more viewers than all the others combined! Is it because all the people watching Fox are stupid (liberals explanation) or is it the country itself is more conservative than it is liberal? I'll admit, it may not be much more conservative, but if we just say that the country is 51% conservative and 49% liberal and there is one cable news station that has a conservative bias and there are 4 stations that have an obvious liberal bias, tell me, what station do you think will have the higher ratings? Any idiot can figure that out, except the ones that work for or invested their money in Air America.

LaShawn Barber has another hypothesis here.

Brian Anderson has a brilliant article on this here.