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When Air America launched last year, it was the beneficiary of more free publicity than any radio show or network launch had ever received. So desperate was the mainstream media to find some left-leaning response to the Limbaugh-led revolution in talk radio that the many and obvious flaws in the network's offerings went largely unreported. Those of us who have been around radio studios for a few years know, though, that launch hype and selective reading of Arbitron results can never mask the key question: Is a show profitable? Do the ads sell? Do sponsors arrive and stay, year after year? Does the affiliate list grow and grow?
The answers to those questions are yes, yes, yes, and yes for Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, Laura Ingraham, Dennis Prager, Michael Medved and, yes, me. About Air America it is very hard to say because, well, the numbers are hard to come by. When the Philadelphia Inquirer took a hard look in July, the assessment wasn't rosy:
Now that it's possible to compare ratings for this spring to last year's start-up, it's clear that [Air America] has yet to climb out of the cellar.
Air America's overall ratings, which rose initially after all the free publicity, faded before the November election and haven't recovered. . . .
Limbaugh, still the giant among talkers, with 14.75 million listeners on 600 stations, has squashed Franken like a bug.
Franken's ratings have dropped 50 percent in Boston since spring 2004,
and he is down 14 percent in New York, where his listeners now number fewer than 188,000.
To its troubles over audience decline must now be added the very strong smell of scandal. Though you, and apparently New York's publicity-addicted Attorney General Elliott Spitzer, may not have heard, Air America is in some serious trouble for its creative start-up financing.
The full details are available from bloggers Radio Equalizer, Michelle Malkin, and Ed Morrissey, and New York Sun reporter David Lombino is digging as well. Short version: Not-for-profits that exist to serve kids and Alzheimer's' patients, overwhelmingly via the funds obtained from government grants, should not be "investing" in incredibly risky start-up radio networks. But the Gloria Wise Boys and Girls Club--apparently now defunct--did just that last spring, funneling hundreds of thousands of dollars into Air America's coffers.
Here's the most recent IRS Form 990 for the Club. Here's the one from the year before. The Club does not appear to have made any prior "investments" of this sort, and if there are "investment guidelines" from which the Club's Board of Directors was operating, I will be very, very surprised. My producer and I have spent a lot of time trying to get a member of the board on the record about the investment. The only one who agreed to talk to us referred us to Rubenstein Public Relations. An assistant to Richard Rubenstein called me to relay that he didn't know anything about the "Gloria Wise story." Odd.
GunnyL said:The MSM will ignore this as long as possible. When they no longer can, look for it on page A23 of your local rag ......
nakedemperor said:I guess liberals don't have a taste for invective, hysterical propaganda.
The shrill, biased right-leaners keep on recruiting more and more toe-the-line drones. Good for them.
Its like my man Lenny Fishburn said: free your minds, suckas.
Or was that Shaft?
nakedemperor said:I guess liberals don't have a taste for invective, hysterical propaganda.
Without hysterical propaganda, y'all would be completely speechless.
The shrill, biased right-leaners keep on recruiting more and more toe-the-line drones. Good for them.
Its like my man Lenny Fishburn said: free your minds, suckas.
Or was that Shaft?
GunnyL said:No comment on the misappropriation of funds earmarked for charity, huh?
nakedemperor said:I guess liberals don't have a taste for invective, hysterical propaganda.
The shrill, biased right-leaners keep on recruiting more and more toe-the-line drones. Good for them.
Its like my man Lenny Fishburn said: free your minds, suckas.
Or was that Shaft?
Limbaugh, still the giant among talkers, with 14.75 million listeners on 600 stations, has squashed Franken like a bug.
The Bronx-based Gloria Wise Boys & Girls Club has been duped out of a reported $875,000 meant for poor children and elderly Alzheimer's patients. Evan Montvel-Cohen, the former chairman of the much-hyped liberal radio network Air America, is at the center of the erupting scandal. Air America radio host Al Franken, punctuating his discussion with nervous laughter, called Cohen a "crook" on his show last week and confessed to his left-wing audience that "I think he was robbing Peter to pay Paul."
(You can listen to Franken's odd discourse for yourselves here.)
Curiously, Air America has shown little interest in urging law enforcement officials to track down Cohen and hold him accountable for "robbing" -- Al's word, not mine -- an inner-city charity in the network's name. Why is that? Franken says the subject of massive theft from one of the largest nonprofit charities for underprivileged residents in New York City is "boring."
Yes. "Boring."
Even O.J. Simpson still fakes occasional interest in finding his wife's killer between his rounds of golf. Franken and Air America management, by contrast, seem unusually eager to sweep the entire financial scandal under the rug. Meanwhile, the Boys & Girls Club hasn't seen a dime of the bilked money repaid. Hearts aren't the only things that seem to be bleeding at Air America.
That is why I am volunteering to help Al Franken find the swindler and warn others about him. Free of charge. And I'm calling on my always curious, never bored, readers to fill the vacuum of outrage and join me in assisting The Search For Air America's Swindler.
Here are a few clues and some helpful information I've gathered for Franken to share with his fellow Air America sleuths:
Cohen reportedly told the Gloria Wise Boys & Girls Club executive committee last year that he needed money to cover medical expenses for himself and his father -- "a businessman in Asia," according to the New York Sun, who was said to be "gravely ill." There's just one small problem with the sob story about Cohen's dad, though. He has been dead since 1991.
According to Fran Magbual, a family friend of the Cohens whom I interviewed this week from Hawaii, Marvin Montvel-Cohen was an art and anthropology professor at the University of Guam. Magbual's father also taught at that school. Cohen's deceased father "was a simple, nice man. Well respected," Magbual told me. Another old friend of the Cohens, Gail Stone, also knew Cohen's father in Guam, where she grew up. "I'm glad he's not alive to see this," Stone told me by phone from Hawaii. Stone lived next to an accountant who worked with Cohen the younger at a Guam publication called Latte Magazine. According to Stone, her neighbor was fired after calling attention to financial irregularities involving Cohen.
Last week, I heard from another source in Hawaii -- a top executive at a large nonprofit in Honolulu who preferred to remain anonymous but wanted to send a strong message:
"Thought you should know that Evan Cohen, believe it or not, has relocated to Hawaii and had been applying for Development Director positions at local nonprofits. I was involved as a part of an interview team in which we interviewed him a couple of months ago . . . Fortunately, we did some research on him, as he was (obviously) not honest in his resume, and eliminated him from the process. . . . Chances are, he has already moved out of the state."
Al Franken, who specializes in blowing the whistle on "lies and the lying liars who tell them," could provide a helpful public service by passing this warning on to his vast audience of caring liberals. Cohen is out there somewhere. Both he and current Air America executives know a lot more about the liberal radio money pit than the public has been told -- and not just related to the victims at the Gloria Wise Boys & Girls Club.
But don't worry, Al. We're on the trail.
You can wake up now.
Hobbit said:I had the misfortune of hearing a little bit of Air America as I passed through Nashville. After their "days we haven't caught Osama because Bush is an idiot" counter, they spent 5 minutes on how much Cindy Sheehan rocks, then spend another hour saying the same stuff I heard about 9/11 and the Iraq War years ago. No wonder they can't make any money.
bcalame - 5:19 PM ET August 17, 2005 (#9 of 9)
The Times Showed Up Late to Air America Story
Readers of The Times were poorly served by the paper's slowness to cover official investigations into questionable financial transactions involving Air America, the liberal radio network. The Times's first article on the investigations finally appeared last Friday after weeks of articles by other newspapers in New York and elsewhere.
The Times's recent slowness stands in contrast to its flurry of articles about Air America in the spring of 2004, when the network was launched. "Liberal Voices (Some Sharp) Get New Home on Radio Dial," read the headline on The Times's article the morning of March 31 when the network went on the air. The article noted that the network had a staff headlined by comedian Al Franken and hopes of establishing a counterpoint to conservative radio personalities such as Rush Limbaugh.
Two months later, The Times reported that the network had come close to running out of money in April but had received an infusion of an undisclosed amount of cash from sources that weren't identified. The article noted that Evan M. Cohen, a primary early backer and the chairman of the network, had resigned.
Yet The Times was silent as other publications reported that city and state investigators were looking into whether the Gloria Wise Boys and Girls Club in the Bronx had made improper loans of as much as $875,000 to Air America. Mr. Cohen, it turned out, had served simultaneously as a top executive at Air America and as the club's development director. And since the club operated largely with grants from government sources, any money passed to Air America may have come from the public till.
It has become clearer in the past week or so that Air America hasn't yet fully repaid the "loans" from the club, and its financial condition remains murky even in The Times's article Friday. So the future of the radio network seems to be a key question for The Times to answer.
"We were slow in the first place and need to do more," Rick Berke, an associate managing editor at The Times, told me Monday. While it's no excuse for such a belated response to the brewing scandal, it's true that pieces of the unfolding story fell in the domains of three different parts of the newsroom: the metropolitan desk, the business desk and the culture desk. There was, my inquiries suggest, a lack of coordination and awareness of what the paper's competitors across town were writing.
But it seems to me that this story is still unfolding, and The Times, for the sake of all its readers, needs to get to the bottom of any improper conduct and assess Air America's future.
There's another reason to get to the bottom of the scandal. It's the perception problem a perception of liberal bias for which I haven't found any evidence after checking with editors at the paper.
Failing to cover the story until late last week has led numerous readers, especially those who seemed inspired by conservative bloggers, to write in saying that a liberal bias in the newsroom caused the paper to downplay the budding scandal. One reader put it this way: "If a conservative radio network had been started with money improperly 'borrowed' from a charity like a boys and girls club, it would be front page news for weeks in your paper. Once more, your left-wing bias is showing."
The NYT's ombudsman
Byron Calame, the NYT's second "public editor" (their term for ombudsman), has finally admitted in his web journal that the paper was slow in covering the Air America scandal. Mediacrity is all over the case. Here's my analysis.
Calame wrote
pieces of the unfolding story fell in the domains of three different parts of the newsroom: the metropolitan desk, the business desk and the culture desk. There was, my inquiries suggest, a lack of coordination and awareness of what the paper's competitors across town were writing.
The first excuse offered is phony self-justification, not a reasonable explanation. The different parts of the newsroom were able to cover Air America for numerous puff pieces at its launching, after all. The entire point of having reporters in those noisy crowded newsroom is so that they can share information. The big stories usually involve multiple domains.
The second excuse is hedged with the phrase "my enquiries suggest". Why the distancing? Is he afraid to tell his colleagues that it looks to him like they are biased? Weasel words, in other words?
Why does he mention "what the paper's competitors across town were writing"? I think he is alluding to the Bronx Community News here. Which means he is letting his colleagues off the hook for not realizing the blogosphere and then the NY Post, Washington Times, and now a trickle of metropolitan dailies, were reporting and commenting on the story.
The isolation of the Times staff from an entire universe of news and commentary is the biggest reason Calame is making excuses for the paper. But it nowhere enters his consideration.
Even worse, he goes on to write
There's another reason to get to the bottom of the scandal. It's the perception problem a perception of liberal bias for which I haven't found any evidence after checking with editors at the paper.
Mediacrity is justifiably stunned that he cannot uncover any evidence of bias. But I also find it stunning that he admits his search for bias consists of asking the editors. They will never admit their bias because they don't see it. And neither does Calame.
Thomas Lifson 8 18 05
Though you might.Bonnie said:Interesting Kathianne, this is having reprocussions with the Times now as well. I like it!!
nakedemperor said:I guess liberals don't have a taste for invective, hysterical propaganda.
http://www.nationalreview.com/york/york200508190909.aspnakedemperor said:I guess liberals don't have a taste for invective, hysterical propaganda.
The shrill, biased right-leaners keep on recruiting more and more toe-the-line drones. Good for them.
Its like my man Lenny Fishburn said: free your minds, suckas.
Or was that Shaft?
