First they came for Lizz Winstead...

then they came for Marc Maron...
And now they are coming after Mike Malloy..

Who will they target next? Randi?

AAR has dealt us so much dissapointment in the last few years... What can we do besides e-mail, phone calls, petitions, etc.? They don't seem to have worked in the past.. :(

Do we have to do something more "radical" like cancelling premium or boycotting AAR??

I can't do either (no AAR in Atlanta anymore,) but I've made phone calls and signed the petition.

It's a radio network, and a badly run one at that. It sucks that they've axed all those people you mentioned (and I agree, they were the most entertaining) but come on. It's a business, not the holy freaking liberal saviour.

If you don't like how AAR does things, then take the bull by the horn and start a blog, or a podcast or get involved with local community run cable access, low power FM or your local college radio station. Never has there been a time such as now when the people can truly take over the media. You're never going to reach the yokels who prefer to be spoonfed their information from Fox News anyway so a nationally syndicated liberal radio network is worthless for that demographic which means AAR is mostly preaching to the choir anyway.

If you don't have the time or energy to do it yourself, then financially support projects like Head-On Radio Network that are out there doing it. I don't vouch for them, I don't even listen to them, but offer them as just 1 example of people who aren't playing the victim and actually doing something.
http://headonradionetwork.com

You should be spiting your face! Now cut off that damned nose, and start boycotting Air America!

(Do I need to insert the sarcasm smilie here? If I do, please let me know.)

:evilgrin:

If I had actually been paying them money in the first place, but then I get the feeling that's the case for most of the people hyperventilating about censorship and Rovian plots to stifle the TRUTH!!!111.

Except for Rachel and they have kept her. It was too much like NPR for me. Lizz stunk up the joint.

If Marc Maron would actually take calls and stop trying to be "funny" his whole morning program, he might of turned out to be decent. He seemed like he was trying out his nightclub act on us at 6 am in the morning. A lot of his bits crashed like a bad SNL skit.

Mike Malloy was decent, but he has/had a bad time slot. He would be a lot better right after Randi.

By the way, I stopped listening to Franken last year. He seems to repeat everything in his book and doesn't bring in anything fresh. Plus, he needs more callers.

It was a morning show and slow paced, and low key is what I look for at that time of day. YMMV of course.

I agree about Malloy's time slot and Franken's lack of fresh material. I never learned anything from Franken's show.

did she have an early AAR position?

And her role in helping to create The Daily Show was heavily touted. She, Rachel Maddow and Chuck D. had a morning show entitled Unfiltered which was OK, but Lizz was not the most dynamic radio personality. Chuck D. was surprisingly good I thought, but wasn't there very often.

a weekend show which he can handle with his schedule.

I liked Unfiltered and I liked Lizz, but I knew there would be some shaking up somewhere, and it did have some problems.

When they dumped Sirius, who had carried their programming basically in full from day one, I was pissed. I get that it was a business decision, but Goldberg was quoted saying something along the lines that it was a great trade off - losing all of us (about a million listeners) who had bought Sirius so we could have AAR was a "great trade off?" I spent hundreds of dollars getting Sirius for one reason - AAR. So they screwed me, and anyone else who did the same.

Then they dumped Marc Maron - who had kept me sane every morning in my cube surrounded by RW nutjobs, who got me through the Day After Election 2004, when all I could feel was shock - Marc Maron who is one of the funniest people I've ever heard. Sure, they moved him to late night in LA, but it was too late for me, I'm on the east coast. And I listen to radio the old fashioned way - as it's being broadcast. Dumping Marc Maron was it for me.

I rarely listened to Malloy, not because I didn't like him, but because I didn't listen to the radio at that time of night. I know he's really popular, particularly with a lot of DU'ers, and I'm angry for them.

Mostly I'm angry with the powers that be at AAR, who seem to be looking for instant success rather than building an audience over time. I'm angry that something potentially so powerful has been FUBAR'd over "business" decisions. I'm angry that short-sightedness is ruining a really great thing.