The Sacramento Bee displayed its usual liberal cheerleading bias recently when it posted a story on Air America by Bee Staff Writer J. Freedom du Lac entitled “Air America After a year, the liberal radio network is making waves.” It was an over-the-top puff piece about Air America.
I don’t have a problem per se with articles that stay away from criticism and are intended to emphasize the view point of the subject. However, the article included statistics and analysis of Air America’s success without even so much as a hint that it was doing poorly. In fact, the article appears to have been intended to give the reader the impression that it is actually doing very well. The truth is that Air America is doing horribly.
Brian Maloney discusses the most recent ratings here. Michelle Malkin occassionaly discusses Air America, like here. Based on the information posted on Air America’s website, I figured out that most of the 51 markets that it is located in are tiny markets. Ten of the markets Air America is in are not even ranked by Arbitron. Note that Casper, WY is the last ranked market (#293) measured by Arbitron.
The following are the number of stations (on the right) hosting Air America in the top radio markets (on the left).
1-10 = 7
1-25 = 15
1-50 = 22
1-100 = 28
1-293 = 41
unranked = 10