Saving Air America (a Truthdig interview with Mark Green)

[marmar]

Truthdig Podcast: Saving Air America

Posted on Apr 2, 2007



This week: Mark Green, the new president of Air America, tells Truthdig why it didn’t work, what he’s going to do to fix it and what you can expect in the future from America’s only progressive radio network.

Transcript:

Harris: This is Truthdig. James Harris on one side and Josh Scheer on the other, and on the phone, Mark Green. He’s been involved in several political races. He ran a recent mayoral race in ’01 against Bloomberg. He has been outspoken in his effort to smote racial profiling thus. And he has now taken a new job as the president of the Air America radio, the liberal talk network, and they’re calling it “Air America 2.0.” First of all, Mark Green, how are you doing today?

Mark Green: I couldn’t be better.

Harris: I want to start kind of on a somber note ... you lost ’06 race for New York state attorney general and you released a comment saying, “I won’t be running for office again, but I’ll continue to advocate and teach.” I want to know, quite seriously, how has your work continued since the election, and has the acquisition of Air America helped you to effect change?

Green: Picking up from that, the day after I lost the primary, I was scheduled to and did teach my class in government, a freshman honors seminar at NYU. I love teaching, have been doing it four years at NYU, went back to running the New Democracy Project, a public policy progressive institute, and done a ton of—I think—leading work on campaign finance reform, or what I call “democracy funding,” for example.

... What happened in December and January is that Air America radio, the first and only progressive radio talk network, founded in 2004 by, among others, Alan Franken—. Well, it had gone bankrupt in October. It was a big idea that often had misspending and mismanagement. And what happened is, my family bought it in January/February, and I’m now the president of it. It’s very important because, was it Lincoln who said, “You can’t do anything without public opinion and you can do anything with it”? Well, what’s public opinion? It’s the education system plus the media. And so I’ve written a lot of books, which I love doing, and now I have the opportunity to be running a radio network that has great progressive talent with two and half million people listening, streaming on satellite, for example. It’s a very important vehicle, especially in this ’07-08 political cycle. But before we can be influential, we have to be profitable, so we’re trying to stem the losses and make it grow.

Harris: What are some changes you’re going to make to address profit? The common doubts among liberal talk networks are that they don’t sound like Rush and they’re not upset like Rush and they’re pretty monotonous in their content. What programming will you change and what marketing will you adjust to try to turn this into a cash cow, or at least something that gives you money instead of taking money?

Green: Cash cow. That’s a nice dream. I’d be happy with stability. Look, the country is roughly split between B and R, blue and red states. It’s crazy to think that right-wing talk radio can make money but progressive talk radio can’t. That’s obviously a fallacy. The only one difference is—. Neither side is smarter than the other, although my wife would persuasively argue that liberals are smarter than conservatives. But let’s say intelligence is equally distributed. One of the problems is that businesses are owned, I would say, more by Republicans than Democrats. It’s just the way it goes. And they’re more likely to advertise on conservative talk radio than on progressive talk radio. With that built in, first, what we’re doing—. When you say it can be monotonous, boy, I don’t think you’ve listened to Al Franken, originally, and now Thom Hartmann, who broadcasts out of Oregon, is amazingly knowledgeable, interesting and popular. Randi Rhodes, who’s on from 3 to 6 on Air America. Very opinionated and entertaining. She’s followed by Rachel Maddow, who reads and comments on and makes fun of the news. I think we have a very strong lineup. We will be making changes, inevitably, because you never know who the next—. Well, take him: Rush Limbaugh was just a local guy who went national, not because of his beliefs but because of his skills. ....(more)

The complete piece, in transcript and podcast form, is at: http://www.truthdig.com/avbooth/item/truthdig_podcast_saving_air_america/

[Pokey Anderson]

1. Very interesting.

Thanks for posting!