Air America

A conservative media watchdog group believes the bell may be tolling for the liberal radio network Air America. Tim Graham, director of media analysis at the Media Research Center (MRC), says Al Franken's struggling network is simply "not working as a business" and cannot even manage to draw an audience in that epicenter of intellectual liberalism, New York. This, Graham says, is evidenced by the network's recent move from WLIB-AM to an even smaller and weaker station, WWRL-AM. "This is not your standard for-profit radio enterprise like, for example, the way that Rush Limbaugh came up through the ranks on major radio," the MRC spokesman observes. "That was obviously a dramatic business success. This has been anything but that; it cannot survive without subsidies," he asserts. Meanwhile, the media analyst says the liberal media outlets have avoided covering Air America's failures. "When they're actually stealing funds from Boys and Girls Clubs to try to pay the bills," he remarks, "I mean, these are the stories that they just haven't wanted to do -- anything that says this network is not succeeding -- because they suggest that if Air America is failing, then somehow liberalism is fading." If Rush Limbaugh or Sean Hannity lost his flagship station, the mainstream media would be salivating over the conservative demise, Graham contends; yet those media are silent as Air America sinks into oblivion. [Chad Groening]