If you want a flavor of how the media is likely going to treat the launch of the Al Franken Show on the soon to be launched liberal talk radio network, you need not look much further than this objective report from Al's hometown paper. You can give the reporter credit for nailing the theme in the lead. In fact nailing it in the first two words.

Satirical superstar and St. Louis Park native Al Franken has signed on as a prime player with Central Air, a new politically liberal radio network.

Franken's show is slotted for a head to head match-up with Rush Limbaugh. It's shaping up like a celebrity boxing match between Pee Wee Herman and Mike Tyson. It will be interesting to hear the spin when Al gets trampled in the ratings by the man he called in a book title "A Big Fat Idiot."

Am I being overly optimistic in predicting Al Franken's failure? I don't think so. The one thing missing from the liberal radio plan is a market. Liberals believe that there was some sort of conservative conspiracy to take over talk radio and silence liberal voices. The simple reason that talk radio is dominated by conservative voices, is because those are the voices talk radio listeners want to hear.

There is perhaps one other factor that will doom Al's show the dustbin of failed radio, and that is a concerted effort to make sure that his show is as little like Limbaugh's in format and content as possible. It makes sense that to be successful in talk radio you should start by deliberately distancing yourself from the most consistently successful format on the air. Doesn't it?

Posted by: Stephen Macklin at 09:10 AM | Comments (2) | Add Comment