On 31 Mar 2004 23:06:37 GMT, Tom Betz wrote:

It was my understanding (please correct me if I'm wrong on this) that Air
America is leasing WLIB; presumably, profit for Percy is built into the
lease terms. Inner City has said that they weren't making a profit with
the old format.

Percy Sutton is a very smart man. I'm certain this arrangement brings
WLIB into the black financially. I would bet there's also a piece of
the advertising action built in. It's been reported that Air America
is chargin $1500 a minute. With 6 stations I can only imagine how many
bonus spots that includes.

The question then becomes whether Air America will ever make a profit; and
they have said that their business plan calls for them to lose money for
the first two years.

Walsh and Cohen were interviewed on 60 Minutes II and declared there
was enough money to lose for years to come.

The rollout of Franken was disappointing. He was clearly out of his
element and I have to replace the glass in my car that was shattered
by the piercing laugh of his NPR sidekick. This should have been the
best show they could have done as their debut, having months to
prepare. It wasn't. I think there's too much TV influence to
understand radio.

The production values were bad, as was the interface between Air
America's feed and XM's. Air America's levels were all over the place.
When XM took over levels came back to normal. It sounds like AM
operators who rely on processing to ride gain. Even the 60 Minutes
video showed pinned meters much of the time.

For a few minutes I thought Rush Limbaugh's feed got crossed. Ed
Shultz sounds like a wannabe Rush with only the content changed.

I wish they hadn't gotten so much advance publicity and caused
expectations to be so high and not met.

Rich