Left of the Dial

It's Air America's one year anniversary. We still don't have a station in Pittsburgh, but you can stream it off the internet.

After listening to year after year of Dr. Laura and Rush Limbaugh I find the Air America shows much much more palatable. I probably listen to a little bit of Al Franken and Randi Rhodes every day, and sometimes I hear some of Unfiltered and The Majority Report. They're all good shows, and its nice to hear someone spouting something other than Right Wing propaganda (even though its often just as much propaganda coming from the left).

Truth be told, I still have the right wing show stations set in my car. Limbaugh moved to a new FM station and was replaced on KDKA by Sean Hannity. Hannity is much worse than Limbaugh - further to the right, and much more loose with the truth. After Rush on the FM station is Michael Savage. He's worse than Hannity. With all this time to fill you think someone would pick up Air America rather than continuing to slide right off the cliff to the right.

I swear it makes me long for Tom Lycus. At least he was just chauvinist.

To mark the one year anniversary, HBO is running a movie "Left of the Dial" chronicling the preparation and the first year on the air. The reason there's a movie is because there were significant business problems and they very nearly went out of business. I find that actually to be the least interesting part of the story.

What I found was interesting was that once they got established the following things happened with regularity:

Franken outrated Limbaugh,
Rhodes outrated Hannity, and
The Majority Report (Sam Seder and Jaeane Garofalo) outrated Savage.

So, when given a choice, people who want to listen to political talk very well might choose left biased talk over right. Granted NYC is a fairly diverse market, but it would be nice to have the choice in more cities.

I wonder if there's a Pittsburgh station looking for a format?

The end of the film shows last November's election. I remember listening to the anguish at the time, but it was totally different getting to see it on the faces. Watching the utter disbelief as the count comes in, you have to feel for these people even if you don't agree with their politics. It brought the whole thing back for me.

Anyway, the film is pretty good, you should check it out. And definitely check out Air America - over the air if you're lucky enough to have a station or streaming if you don't. There's always a link in the margin of this page.