Danny Goldberg is Delusional

Danny Goldberg, the CEO of Air America, says that Bill O'Reilly is wrong and that Air America is financially stable:

Air America is in strong financial shape. Last week we started broadcasting from our new multi-million dollar studios.

Several weeks earlier the Board of Directors of Air America’s parent company accelerated re-payment of a loan from the Gloria Wise Boys and Girls Club of $875,000 two years in advance of a previously agreed upon re-payment plan. In the last several months, Air America has expanded its executive team to augment our efforts on the internet and in affiliate relations.

The pretext for the latest smears is an initiative I launched last week called Air America Associates, in which I asked our listeners to support our programming financially and at various levels offer bumper stickers, tote bags, etc. as a way of thanking them. (We received thousands of responses, far beyond what we projected for the first few days).

He then goes on to compare the Air America fund drive to Rush selling shirts or some such nonsense. Well, if AA is so "financially stable" and has such a great following, how come they can't survive in a city that is among the staunchest of the Democrat strongholds?

Al Franken and Randi Rhodes are getting the boot from Philadelphia airwaves, as WHAT-AM (1340) is pulling off programming from Air America, the liberal talk-radio network.

Friday will be the last day, and a new WHAT lineup will begin Monday, said general manager Kernie Anderson, adding that "things were not working out" with Air America after about a year.

WHAT aired Air America's programming from noon to 7 p.m. weekdays, sandwiched between the rest of its lineup. The juxtaposition of liberal talk and WHAT's African America-targeted talk programming seemed an odd fit from the start.

Ratings were abysmal.

Back to Goldberg. How can he claim that ratings for AA are good?

In fact, the ratings for the Bill O’Reilly radio show in New York were worse than those on Air America that he described as “catastrophic” In the key 25-54 year demographic which talk radio offers to advertisers, the Spring, 2005 Arbitron ratings showed that Monday-Friday from 2-4 PM when O’Reilly is on WOR-AM and which at Air America’s 1190 WLIB-AM contains the last hour of “The Al Franken Show” and the first hour of “The Randi Rhodes Show,” that O’Reilly had a .3 share and Air America a .4 share. O’Reilly had a cumulative audience of 75,400 and Air America had a cumulative audience of 89,300.

O'Reilly's radio show has never garnered much attention or ratings. His TV show is where he crushes all comers. To equate any kind of success when comparing oneself to O'Reilly on radio is definitely setting the bar low.