Tag: Air America

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Letters To The Editor Opinion

Letters to the Editor

Best of Memphis

Once again, the Flyer‘s “Best of Memphis” issue has both entertained and infuriated me. I realize that polling is an imperfect art and the (sometimes) lowest common denominator will determine the winner. And yes, I like Huey’s hamburgers.

But seriously, how can a multi-million-dollar golf course such as Spring Creek Ranch possibly be tied (for third-best golf course) with a goat track like Overton Park? And how can a pedestrian “Italian” restaurant like Pete and Sam’s possibly be in consideration for “Best Italian” in the same garlic breath as Ronnie Grisanti’s?

I could go on: “Best Service” had Texas de Brazil first, followed by Chick-Fil-A??? Holy crap! That’s just insane. And Mud Island Amphitheater winning third in “Best Place To Hear Live Music”? Yeah, like what, twice a year?

I know the Flyer doesn’t have any control over the voting, but, people, please — show some common sense!

Ricky Gardner

Memphis

I want to know how Geoff Calkins and Wendi Thomas win “Best Columnist” every year when the Flyer offers us such stellar and superior talents as Jackson Baker, John Branston, Mary Cashiola, and Bruce VanWyngarden?

Haven’t you people ever heard of stuffing the ballot?

Mary Warren

Memphis

War Ethics

As I watched the excellent PBS Ken Burns series The War this past two weeks, I was struck how American expectations and standards seem to have changed since World War II. Think about what President Bush is reviled for in Iraq.  

Under an order signed by Roosevelt, well over 100,000 U.S. citizens — mostly based solely on their race — were sent to concentration camps and much of their property was stolen. For years after Pearl Harbor, Americans weren’t told the extent of our losses in men and ships. GIs in Europe, three years after we got into the war, had such lousy equipment to fight in winter, they were stealing from the German dead to try to keep from freezing.

The Allies killed 35,000 German civilians in one night in one city. A million Japanese civilians were burned out of their homes in one day in one city. German Army prisoners were executed out of hand, and an experienced U.S. soldier protesting this was warned he might get shot too.

“Intelligence failure” hardly seems an adequate term for the massive surprise military attack on Pearl Harbor after FDR had been in office for years. Of course, the U.S. in 1940-’41 had a military smaller than Romania’s, years after Germany and Japan were arming to the teeth.

If you don’t like Bush, fine — there’s a lot not to be happy with. But maybe think about what you accept without reservation in one president before you curse another.

Herbert E. Kook Jr.
Germantown

Air America

Because I still mourn the loss of Air America Radio, I am writing in response to the letter from the gentleman in Germantown (“Letters,” September 27th issue) and his reference to a “disgruntled” listener (and the three other listeners).

There were actually a lot more than three listeners and would probably have been many more if we had been made aware Air America wasn’t going to be available in our area. He mentions “hate,” and I won’t say there wasn’t some in evidence, but I guess it was just the wrong flavor for him, because I didn’t hear it directed at homosexuals, minorities, pro-choicers, Jews, Muslims, Catholics, or war protestors.

The “bile” being spewed was more directed at those who were perceived to be failing in their duty to protect and defend our Constitution and to respect our country as a nation of laws. How can dissent be un-American? Is that not what created this country? I would ask the gentleman, and anyone else, if you had been around in 1776, would you have stood with the king or the colonists?

Linda Cowart
Germantown

Iran and the U.S.

I keep hoping the damage the elected heads of state of Iran and the U.S. can do is reaching its limits.

It is a sad commentary on democracy when an “Ahmadina-Bush” is chosen. For my part, I vow never to vote for a Republican again, as I did in several races in the last general election.

Let’s send a message and work to take back our country from the election thieves of 2000!

Greg Williams

Memphis

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News

Left Behind: The Death of Progressive Radio in Memphis

What’s good news for sports junkies is tough luck for fans of angry leftist radio. WWTQ AM-680, once the home of Air America recently became Fox Sports Radio.

“Nobody is more disappointed than I am,” says program director Jerry Dean of Air America’s local demise.

So what, exactly, killed Progressive Talk in the Midsouth? There was certainly no shortage of optimism in January 2005, when Entercom, the Pennsylvania-based media conglomerate that also operates Memphis station 104.5 WRVR, launched WWTQ.

“The time is right for liberal radio,” Michael Harrison, the publisher of Talkers Magazine, the leading talk radio trade publication, told the Flyer. Dean described local support for a progressive alternative to Rush Limbaugh and Mike Flemming as a “groundswell.”

“It still seems like a good idea,” Dean says, unable to explain why Air America attracted consistently low ratings and failed attract advertisers in solid blue Memphis. He suspects some advertisers were afraid to associate their brand with a liberal station.

“But it’s not like liberals don’t buy things,” Dean says. “Cars, clothes, and everything else.”

WWTQ never found an effective way to localize the station. The eponymous show briefly hosted by Memphis media veteran Leon Gray showed early promise, but Gray’s conservative views on issues like evolution and gay rights didn’t appeal to listeners tuning in to hear Randi Rhodes and Al Franken. In June 2006, Gray and the progressive talk format parted ways.

Dean doesn’t agree that WWTQ failed to localize and remains complimentary Gray’s performance. “I always thought Leon did a really good job,” he says.

In his obit for the Leon Gray Show, Jim Maynard, a liberal blogger and sometimes political candidate wrote, “listening to [Gray] was almost as frustrating as listening to Mike Fleming on the conservative talk 600-AM. In fact, I doubt many people could tell the difference between them if they listened to them side by side on issues like gay rights, abortion, school prayer, creationism v. evolution, etc.”

Not all of the blame for WWTQ basement level numbers can be blamed on the station’s failure to localize. Air America has experienced numerous setbacks nationally as well. The station lost its flagship host when comedian and author Al Franken left Air America to run for Senate in Minnesota.

–Chris Davis

Categories
News The Fly-By

Off the Air America

Drivers hoping to hear talk-show host Randi Rhodes rant about the Larry Craig sex scandal last week were in for a shock.

Beginning September 1st, WWTQ 680 AM dropped its Progressive Talk format, which aired content from left-leaning Air America, in favor of Fox Sports Radio.

“It really comes down to listener and advertising support,” says Clint Sly, market manager for Entercom Radio. “The station never really gained the listening momentum … that we’d hoped for.”

The new Fox Sports Radio has exclusive local airing rights to the St. Louis Cardinals games, as well exclusive rights to University of Tennessee football and men’s basketball. When the station is not airing live game coverage, it will feature syndicated sports-talk programming.

“Sports fans are loyal, not only as listeners, but also with advertising dollars,” Sly says.

In its two-year run on 680 AM, Progressive Talk didn’t gain a large listener base.

Local Democratic activist Jim Maynard believes the lack of local programming on Progressive Talk may have contributed to the declining audience. Last year, the station canceled The Leon Gray Show, the only local talk show on the station.

“After the failed local talk show with Leon Gray, who alienated many progressives with his anti-gay and conservative views on many social issues, the station was basically put on auto-pilot,” Maynard says. “Although the national programs on Air America were pretty good, 680 AM lacked the local touch that conservative [radio station] 600 AM has.”

Nationwide, 45 stations have dropped the format within the past three years. “Across the country, it really hasn’t done as well as we hoped,” Sly says. “Other stations have been having the same issues.”

Air America has had financial problems since its inception in 2004 and filed for bankruptcy in October 2006.

Local Air America fans have been understanding. “A number of people have called saying they wanted a voice in Memphis,” Sly says. “They say they’re grateful that we had the courage to do it as long as we did.”

Categories
News The Fly-By

Still Talking

When Leon Gray showed up at the WWTQ AM-680 studio a few days ago for his regular 4 to 7 p.m. Air America drive-time shift, he was told that his time was up.

“The parting was definitely not amicable,” he says.

Gray, a broadcast veteran of several radio and TV stations both here and elsewhere, acknowledges that declining ratings were part of his problem. But this he blames on shaky support from both the station and its corporate masters.

“If you look at Arbitron, that’s absolutely correct,” Gray says, “but I have to compare the promotion we got to what other stations do to promote their product, to what this company did. Intercom is ashamed of their product. If I bought a new car, I’d like to show it off. They didn’t. Dollar for dollar, we over-achieved. My performance was way above the anticipated, given the investment in me.”

Another obstacle to success was what Gray considers the over-the-edge commentary of Air America’s syndicated lineup. Beyond Al Franken and Jerry Springer, both of whom he admired, the station’s one and only local host found little else that was simpatico. “What certain members of the national Air America network did was take a mirror image opposite conservative radio and push it beyond the conservatives’ delivery of their negatives,” he says.

“For people in this area, knowing that this area is the buckle of the Bible Belt, both black and white, to openly — as the satellite programming does — denounce God or anybody’s expression of God while at the same time holding up with pride, as Janeane Garofalo and Rachel Maddow do, holding up their atheistic beliefs, their homosexuality, to say ‘let’s get rid of theocracy and religion and blah blah blah, accept my gayness,’ those kinds of things just don’t play, to even a lifelong, fourth-generation Democrat in the South.”

Don’t get Gray started on that. Though he insists backlash from his local progressive audience had “absolutely nothing” to do with his firing, he is well aware that his own religious, heterosexual, and anti-abortion agenda often clashed with the preconceptions of many listeners. But he interprets his demographics differently. “My callers may be somewhat accurately defined as center-left, but my listening audience as a whole would be better defined as center-right.”

Of his abrupt dismissal, he says, “I can see the big picture. It was never about me. I wouldn’t allow myself to perceive that as being about me.”

As for the prospect of acquiring future audiences, Gray is emphatic: “I will not seek another on-air job. I have definitely finished seeking on-air radio jobs. And I won’t seek working in news.”

Though he won’t say specifically, one possibility could be political. Gray has worked for several political campaigns in the past, and he is a known supporter of the senatorial ambitions of Memphis congressman Harold Ford Jr.

Gray, a Memphis native who returned to the city in 1994, makes this promise: ” I have developed a strong reconnect with this city. I won’t abandon it in this time of deepest turmoil.”

In other words: One way or another, stay tuned.