Get ready for Bill O'Reilly to chortle tonight, but for the first time since Al Franken tweaked him at a book forum in Los Angeles, this time he'll be correct when he says that Air America will be going off the air. Because it is. For real. And for good. Really soon.
Established to great fanfare in 2004, the liberal radio network made a big splash early on, with hosts like Al Franken, Janeane Garafalo, Randi Rhodes and Rachel Maddow. Started in the middle of the George W. Bush years, it was established with the hope that talk radio didn't have to just be the province of conservatives.
But after a lot of initial media publicity, financial issues began the slow downfall. The network was aired in most major cities, but never in the Tampa Bay market. Subscribers to Sirius-XM have still been able to get the programming locally.
Listed below is the memo delivering the bad news to staffers today.
This article appears in Jan 20-26, 2010.