Post in Democrat Women Stand with Al Franken, US Senate Candidate in Minnesota

Aug 19 17:55 UTC

Oh, what the heck. I'll burn my second post on this.

Christine leapt to the defense of Mr. Smalley's Air America show.  My first
career was radio and so, my conservative talk show notwithstanding, I'm
*exceedingly* clinical about my appraisal of talk radio programming.  Politics
is pretty much politics - but the craft and business of doing good radio is
utterly nonpartisan.

So when Christine says...:

> Mitch called Al's outstanding Air America program a
> "failed talk radio career."
> I listened faithfully, and the informative guests and the
> level of engagement and comprehension Al demonstrated day
> after day were the best thing Air America had to offer.

"The Best Air America had to offer" is best filed under "damning with faint
praise".

Franken sounded terrible on the air; he was an awful interviewer unless he was
interacting with utterly friendly subjects (his interview with John Hinderaker
is a local legend, sort of the "Plan Nine From Outer Space" of radio
interviews).  His inexperience with how to do decent radio showed (which was
why they hired Katherine Lanpher to be his sidekick and do all the radio stuff
- itself a laughable admission).  The fact that he needed a staff of writers to
do his show showed how really unsuited to the business he was.

But that's all style.  People can turn crummy style into a bankable career.
But Franken?  Well...:

> So how does stepping away from a successful
> show he launched
> constitute a "failure"?

There was *nothing*, from an objective, dollars and cents and ratings points
perspective, "successful" about Al Franken or any aspect of Air America.  His
ratings were putrid everywhere he aired (with the exception of Portland Oregon,
and he only succeeded there for about a year), distinguished only by doing
better than the rest of Air America's feeble lineup.  The show was a money pit;
Franken drew at least a million a year in salary (some sources say two
million), and the show's overhead in terms of overpaid producers, undertalented
sidekicks and over-staffed writers made the show a money pit; it would have had
to have had Limbaugh or Hannity-sized numbers to have broken even, much less
succeeded.  Suffice to say, he didn't get those numbers.

I appreciate the fact that you were a fan, Ms. Viken, and at the end of the day
that's all that needs to count for you - but "The Al Franken Show" was a
complete disaster as radio and as business.