There's an article in the Inquirer today about the so-far lack of success for Air America nationally & on WHAT. I am surprised some of the full time AA stations are doing so poorly, although today the ratings for Portland, Or. came out and KPOJ (one of the strongest affiliates in a good target market) came in top 5 just below the #1 talk station. I never expected big things from AA's few hours on WHAT, a 1,000 watt station missing much of the suburbs & south Jersey due to WMID and WRAW. (Even in Bucks Co. I get half WHAT/half WMID sometimes.) WHAT has been the voice of the black community so long it isn't really known outside that community (except by the people who used to 'monitor' it here to complain about it). There is no advertising that Franken & Rhodes are on there, and only someone who really likes these shows (like myself) would put up with the low-budget sound of the station. If you look at the list of affiliates most are small, low power signals compared to the established talk stations in their markets. Getting established seems nearly impossible.
It's really hard to get people to listen to individual shows on stations rather that tuning for a 'format'. Just recently someone posted here 'whatever happened to Irv Homer' even though he's been on block-programmed WBCB several years & mentioned here in the past. So I'd guess many people who would listen to him, one of the most popular hosts here of all time, probably don't bother to find the station and listen. When Limbaugh was first here on 1360 and 1520 it made little overall impact in the market although he was getting big then (no pun intended) nationally.
Interesting to compare AA to the Salem Conservative talk stations, which in most markets are stronger than the AA stations (compare WNTP to WHAT) and they are also doing very poorly nationally. The low ratings of WNTP are on the same station that once had 70% of the audience at night with Hyski, or so they used to say!
I think the poor start for AA or Salem has less to do with political leanings and more with being an upstart on a small signal vs. long established talk stations. With the top talk stations WPHT and WIP already out of the top 10, plus the now long-established talk formats of WHYY and WKXW, maybe there's not enough pie to split.
It's really hard to get people to listen to individual shows on stations rather that tuning for a 'format'. Just recently someone posted here 'whatever happened to Irv Homer' even though he's been on block-programmed WBCB several years & mentioned here in the past. So I'd guess many people who would listen to him, one of the most popular hosts here of all time, probably don't bother to find the station and listen. When Limbaugh was first here on 1360 and 1520 it made little overall impact in the market although he was getting big then (no pun intended) nationally.
Interesting to compare AA to the Salem Conservative talk stations, which in most markets are stronger than the AA stations (compare WNTP to WHAT) and they are also doing very poorly nationally. The low ratings of WNTP are on the same station that once had 70% of the audience at night with Hyski, or so they used to say!
I think the poor start for AA or Salem has less to do with political leanings and more with being an upstart on a small signal vs. long established talk stations. With the top talk stations WPHT and WIP already out of the top 10, plus the now long-established talk formats of WHYY and WKXW, maybe there's not enough pie to split.