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MONEY PIT
By BRIAN MALONEY & MICHELLE MALKIN
AIR America, the much-hyped liberal media ven ture that was supposed to revolutionize talk radio, is "solvent and apparently stable": So claim the gullible cheerleaders at The New York Times, who made that unsubstantiated assertion in a recent glowing profile of Air America host Janeane Garofalo. But behind the fawning headlines and celebrity kiss-ups is a tale of astounding financial and legal chaos.
The city Department of Investigation and state Attorney General Eliot Spitzer continue to conduct separate probes into a dubious loan scheme involving Air America and the Bronx-based Gloria Wise Boys & Girls Club.
An estimated $875,000 of the charity's funds have disappeared. Evan Montvel-Cohen, who served as both chief of Air America and director of development at Gloria Wise, reportedly steered the funds to himself (for claimed medical expenses) and Air America (for operations). Network officials are pinning all the blame on him, and are reportedly pressuring the inner-city charity to back up their story.
But the charity scam is just the tip of the iceberg.
Also banging on Air America's door: New York-based Multicultural Radio Broadcasting Inc.
The company is suing past and present Air America officers and investors in Piquant LLC (the network's current owners) for engaging in a "sham" transfer of ownership to defraud creditors. In state Supreme Court documents filed in May, Multicultural Radio seeks more than $255,000 owed by Air America since March 2004. It also wants Air America to return equipment from its Los Angeles station and repay other debts worth more than $1 million.
The dispute made national headlines in April 2004, when Multicultural Radio booted Air America off its stations in Chicago and Los Angeles over bounced checks. [cun: may lose this stuff: ]A New York judge ruled against Air America and castigated it for its "meritless" legal actions against Multicultural Radio in June 2004 yet the network has since remained mum about its failure to pay up.
Another aggrieved party: Lizz Winstead, a former Air America on-air host and executive vice president in charge of programming. Her lawsuit against the company and Piquant LLC for "breach of contract and unjust enrichment" seeks close to $300,000 plus interest for unpaid salary, vacation, back pay and other fees.
Winstead didn't respond to our request for comment, but her complaint echoes Multicultural Radio's filing in exposing the network's fiscal troubles from its early days in October 2003, when its original owners at AnShell Media ran "into serious financial problems," to the present.
The suit notes that the network has even stiffed her out of promotional fees for plugging Vermont Teddy Bears and "PJ Grams." Air America, she alleges, willfully took those monies "and refused, despite Winstead's repeated demands, to pay them over to her, and converted such monies to their own use and possession."
Air America's financial crunch has now seen money disappear from poor kids, Alzheimer's patients, ethnic radio stations and teddy bear companies. What's next: churches and ice cream vendors?
Like Multicultural Radio, Winstead apparently was a victim who fell through the cracks when Air America transferred ownership of its assets from its former owner (Progress Media) to its current owners (Piquant LLC) and left creditors holding the bag. Multicultural Radio calls it a "classic shell game."
And it appears that the game continues.
Sheldon and Anita Drobny are the far-left Chicago business moguls who created Air America's initial investment firm, AnShell Media. AnShell transformed into Progress Media, which morphed into Piquant but it's still the same the couple.
And now the Drobnys are on a mission to drum up new funds for the project via a new entity "Nova M." They recently preached the virtues of their previously secret business plan to Illinois Democrats, detailing a scheme to buy small rural stations as venues for Air America programming.
Why yet another new company, rather than simply raising more funds through Piquant? Indeed, why are the Drobnys raising fresh capital for acquisitions when they apparently don't have the cash on hand to repay creditors such as Multicultural Radio, Lizz Winstead and, especially, the Gloria Wise Boys and Girls Club?
Even if the business plan really is about buying rural stations for Air America's programming, is it viable? Who would invest in such an operation?
Is there anyone, other than The New York Times, left to fool?
Brian Maloney runs The Radio Equalizer at radioequalizer.blogspot.com. Michelle Malkin's blog is michellemalkin.com
rtwngAvngr said:i heard about al gore doing a cable news channel. I bet they can't get advertisers. Who wants to appeal to bitter socialists with no money.
In 2004, a group led by former U.S. vice president Al Gore bought NWI from Vivendi Universal. Gore said at the time that he wanted his new channel to aim at the 18- to 34-year old viewer.
Hobbit said:I listened to an hour of Air America recently because I wanted to see how bad it really was and because all the other stations were playing financial shows. It's as bad as you think and worse. The host spent about 5 minutes praising the glorious Cindy Sheehan, 5 minutes covering her @$$ by talking about how much she loves freedom and the Iraqis, then spent the remaining 50 minutes yammering about how we've failed to catch OBL, WMD's, and how Bush is a liar, an idiot, a fraud, and the scum of the Earth, with no end in sight. I think it's safe to assume that that's all she talked about for the other 2 hours.
!
rtwngAvngr said:i heard about al gore doing a cable news channel. I bet they can't get advertisers. Who wants to appeal to bitter socialists with no money.
Said1 said:It's not bad actually.
rtwngAvngr said:Is it up and running?
You must be flogged...LOLSaid1 said:It's not bad actually.
Bonnie said:You must be flogged...LOL
rtwngAvngr said:I was disappointed that Springer turned out to be so partisan and idiotic. I loved his tv show. It was ground breaking television. To me the show illustrates what happens to people without a clear moral direction. I think he was just trying to mock white trash, but the lesson I got reaffirms conservative values. Brilliant tv.
Ex-president Clinton and former vice president Al Gore personally tried to raise start-up funds for the troubled Air America Radio network, the network's founder said Sunday.
Asked about the help Clinton and Gore provided, Chicago venture capitalist Sheldon Drobny told C-Span's "Sunday Morning Journal": "They helped us."
"How they helped us was to make introductions to a lot of good people," Drobny said. "Especially Al Gore, who introduced me to Al Franken. . . . He was my dream franchise player when we first conceived of the [radio] idea. And Vice President Gore was very helpful in making the introductions."
Ultimately, fundraising efforts by former White House duo went bust, Drobny said, insisting, "They didn't bring any major funding to the table."
Drobny chalked-up the Clinton-Gore failure to the trouble he had convincing investors that there was a market for liberal talk radio. "I mean, we really had to work hard to make believers out of even liberals," he claimed.
Asked about the financial scandal currently plaguing the network - New York City's Department of Investigation is probing a suspicious loan to Air America by a local Boys & Girls Club - Drobny said he couldn't discuss the matter.
"That particular transaction occurred with the previous ownership," he told C-Span. "And I cannot legally talk about it although I'd love to. But that was not our loan, it was a loan to the previous owners."
