Archives

28 February 2006

Air America Phoenix has now disappeared into the ether

And general manager Bob Christy pens a farewell and thank you note to all the fans of Air America Phoenix, KXXT 1010 AM.
You helped take an unrated, unprofitable AM radio station and pushed it to a tie for 3rd place out of 25 AM stations in Phoenix. You took that same AM station and made it profitable in less than a year and even after the sale was announced you stood by Air America Phoenix and we kept on making money even when our future was in doubt and we didn't know when our "plug" was going to be pulled. In fact, the last month we were on the air was the 3rd best month we've had financially!

Air America Phoenix has now disappeared into the ether and Phoenix is left with multiple Christian formats, some in English and others in Spanish, several "brokered" time stations (you know the radio stations selling you vitamins, good bowel movements and financial advice) a bagful of right wing "Conservative Talk stations" featuring Rush, Sean, Laura, Bill Bennett, Savage, Medved and all of their local imitators, three "Sports Talk" stations that live off the largess of their sister stations in the big corporate clusters that dominate the dial in Phoenix. Is anyone enjoying Tony Snow on KTAR — did anyone ask for him? And there are 3 "nostalgia" stations on AM and another on the FM dial. (The inside radio joke on nostalgia is that listeners are "dying" for it!) CBS new "Free" FM is another station loaded with sophomoric chatter, but without the interruption of overplayed songs! Free FM is a continuous loop of bad FM morning show humor 24 hours a day! CBS should have stood by Howard Stern and they will regret the day they didn't!

As I've stated before, while I wasn't so enamored with most of the network Air America programming, I enjoyed listening to the Charles Goyette program, one of the few media outlets telling the truth on the illegal, immoral invasion of a sovereign nation that posed no threat to the United States, as well as some of the other local programming. The Al Franken show, when broadcast live, was also informative, but really not a caller talk show. Shows like Randi Rhodes, Ed Schultz and others were just as bad as the neoconservative yakkers occupying the remainder of the radio dial.

How KXXT catapaulted from obscurity to money maker in a short period is a vivid illustration of how there is an unserved market that will go unserved again (as it was before AA came to Phoenix in 2004). Lots of folks will now tune out or set their dial to the corpo-federali NPR speak to get their talk radio fix. Otherwise, the remaining radio talk pickings are just dripping of brain dead neocon sycophants or infomercial hell. Reason #10798 to subscribe to satellite radio, I reckon.

And, BTW, Jess Spurgin is the new GM at KXXT 1010 AM.