Good news!
I just read in the AJC that Air America Radio will be available in Atlanta this week. Tune in to AM 1690 to listen.
Instead of linking to the article (the AJC forces you to create an account to view any online content), I’m cutting and pasting it here:
Air America radio coming to Atlanta
Air America, the left-leaning national talk radio network, has landed a home on an Atlanta radio station — on the far right end of the AM dial.
The voices of Chuck D., Randi Rhodes, Al Franken and Janeane Garofalo will be heard at AM 1690 sometime next week once technical issues are resolved, said Air America president Jon Sinton, who is based in Atlanta.
The 1690 spot on the dial recently was running classic country music but is now playing nothing as station owner Intermart Broadcasting prepares for the Air America launch. Current call letters are WSWK-AM but Sinton said the owners plan to change that to WWAA-AM.
Air America, which began six months ago as a counterpoint to conservative talk radio, enters a crowded Atlanta market for gab. There are at least eight other talk radio stations in town, from powerhouse 750/WSB-AM to black talk 1380/WAOK-AM to Real Radio 105.3 on the FM side.
But most Atlanta talk stations are populated with conservative talkers such as Rush Limbaugh on 640/WGST-AM and Laura Ingraham on 920/WGKA-AM.
“As far as I know, the last really liberal talk show host on a major Atlanta station was me,” said Mike Malloy, a metro Atlanta-based veteran talker who left WSB-AM in 1997 after two stints. He recently joined Air America with a 10 p.m. to 1 a.m. show. “I think metro Atlanta has a huge potential audience. Air America is proving in market after market the audience is there.”
Eric Seidel, a media consultant and former WGST-AM station manager, disagreed: “It will never be a factor in this market. There isn’t a large enough audience for this type of talk to make it economically viable.”
The modest signal doesn’t help. With 10,000 watts during the day from a tower in Dekalb County near Decatur, Air America will have city-grade strength for about a 20-mile radius, according to www.radio-locator.com. At night, with 1,000 watts, the coverage area is smaller.
This means most anybody outside the Perimeter with a low tolerance for static will have to catch Air America on the Internet or the two subscription-based satellite radio networks, XM and Sirius.
Nationally, Air America has weathered a rocky start which included financial problems and management turnover. It is now in about 30 cities. “We’re 150 days in and we’re already in half the top 20 markets,” Sinton said. “We’ve shown tremendous growth.”
I will never listen to Air America again until JERRY SPRINGER is removed! How on earth could Air America put such a despicable personality on! The saddest thing is that I will not even listen to Al Franken, Air America’s hero because he is part of the Air America Network, and I will boycott the whole thing until Springer is removed………..get some sense, please!
Don’t throw the baby out with the bathwater! Randy Roads is reason enough to listen to Air America forver!
Thank goodness there is a liberal voice of reason and light in this darkened religious-right SE area. Even Jerry Springer is making sense (He was the mayor of Cincinnati, and he makes fun of his tv show), and Randi, Al, and the rest are armed with the obvious truths that we saw first hand on tv during the hurricane. We sat helpless as we watched people in 100 degree weather with no water, no aid allowed into an area already declared a national emergency BEFORE the hurricane… even though cnn and every other tv station was allowed in.
The denial coming from our gov’t gives me no hope for this country as it stands.
Please, no more double speak or press conferences where the Bushes and Clintons shrug their shoulders and pat their own backs, saying the response was acceptable. It was not.
It was horrific, and they should all be tried for crony-ism and collusion, and examined for their ability to reason, much less hold public office.
And any real estate developer should be hung for licking their lips at this “new-found” property in N.O.
God help those that had anything to do with the hold up of aid to these people, because Air America is going to find them.
In hopes of a better day
c.aiken