Posted by Inside Party Perspective on January 22, 2010 at 11:13:21:
In Reply to: From the Mic website.... posted by Oh really now! on January 21, 2010 at 18:15:03:
: We will continue to provide Madison a truly progressive voice along with wonderfully local programming like "Books and Beats" with Stu Levitan (Sunday/10am) and the newly added lifestyle weekend program "The Kathleen Show" (Sundays/12noon).
: *******
: Translation: Yeah, it's a bummer, but we still have a decent lineup without them....
: ...Well, during the weekdays anyway.
The Mic is largely unaffected because most of its programming is from other syndicators.
In the end, this proved to be Air America's biggest problem...their affiliates picked up other programming during key timeslots and limited Air America to overnights and weekends. Air America founded the liberal talk genre but they never really seemed to understand the radio business (for example, when they launched, it was as a 24-hour network, but talk radio is a format where shows are syndicated individually.) Al Franken was the only major star the network ever had, and even his ratings were mediocre. Over the years, affiliates filled up their schedules with more popular shows from Dial Global and Premeire.
Another major obstable is that older liberals prefer NPR.
Really, the network should have gone under several years ago, but it was kept afloat because it would have been too much of an embarasment for Democrats to have it go down during the 2008 election (and that's coming from a Democrat).