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Air America Radio Takes Off – Will It Fly?

Air America Radio Takes Off - Will It Fly?

Al Franken does love to tweak the right. But will his shtick – and that of his colleagues at Air America Radio – stick? The long-debated liberal network – actually, it calls itself progressive – launched Wednesday.
Programmers of the new network don’t try to hide their concept of offering a left-handed version of popular conservative programs. In fact they chose to give their headliner’s show a derivative name: It’s “The O’Franken Factor.”
But CEO Mark Walsh told the Associated Press that liberal politics would be a “teaser … a loss leader in the window” for the radio network.
Two other programs also have names that sound familiar: “Morning Sedition” is the network’s morning show; “The Majority Report” airs in the evenings, hosted by Janeane Garofalo.
“We are flaming swords of justice,” Franken told a launch party Tuesday, according to AP. “Bush is going down, he is going down, he is going down. And we’re going to help him.”
At the show’s opening Wednesday, Franken jested that they were broadcasting from a bunker below Vice President Cheney’s own.
The show is heard on five stations, all of them AM outlets. They are in New York, Chicago, Los Angeles, Riverside/San Bernadino, Calif., and Portland, Ore. Franken is based at affiliate WLIB in New York, an Inner City Broadcasting station.
The company expects to add a San Francisco affiliate shortly, and as we’ve reported, the network will be carried by XM America Left on XM Satellite Radio.

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