Friday, December 23, 2005

Coping with Week One symptoms of Morning Sedition withdrawal

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So how has it been for you, this first week without Morning Sedition?

Oh, you have no idea what Morning Sedition is, or rather was? You and most everyone else I spoke to during the show's run of something under two years as Air America Radio's morning show--the show that the network never, ever promoted or even mentioned publicly as far as I can tell, and yet pronounced a failure, displaying the kind of bullying chutzpah and imbecility we usually expect from the people who brought us President George W. Two Terms Mandate Bush.

Actually, it was Morning Sedition Planet Bush Correspondent Lawton Smalls who brought us President George W. Two Terms Mandate Bush. (The "Mandate" was added after the 2004 election.) Lawton reported from the alternative universe inhabited by our president, and became one of the most beloved of the show's regular characters. You see, in addition to being as hard-hitting political show as I could wish for, Morning Sedition was a comedy show, drawing on the talents of a roster of talented writers and performers including Jim Earl and Kent Jones and cohost Marc Maron.

(Starting January, the other Morning Sedition cohost, Mark Riley, a solid news and radio veteran, will do a 5am-7am show in the revamped Air America morning lineup, with the very solid Rachel Maddow filling the 7am-9am slot. I've become very fond of Riley, and I may listen to him. But I doubt that I'll feel I have to listen to him.)

It was great stuff, a brilliant and complex, splendidly entertaining and informative show that had an amazingly loyal following. I hear complaints that the ratings were bad, and the affiliates wouldn't carry the show, but you think even the most cretinous brain-dead empty-suit exec would be embarrassed to spout such screeching drivel. I mean, aren't those the suit's jobs?

Does it make sense to complain about ratings when you haven't brought the show to the attention of the people who might listen? I'm not a marketing guy, but when the world seems to be divided between people who love the show and won't miss it and people who've never heard of it and have no idea what it is, I reckon there's a huge problem that may have nothing to do with the show itself.

As for the affiliates, this is a real consideration. But again, isn't that the network suit's job? Would anyone care to guess how many of the affiliates wouldn't have wanted to carry Al Franken's show if Al Franken weren't Al Franken? Isn't it the suit's job to, you know, sell the damned product? Unless of course he doesn't have a clue himself about the product he's trying to sell.

Meanwhile, I'm left thinking about a lesson that was driven home for me some years ago when New York lost what may have been its most exciting experiment in newspapering, New York Newsday. It was a lively paper with a staggering array of column-writing talent (the likes of Murray Kempton and Jimmy Breslin and Sydney Schanberg and Gail Collins and Pete Hamill, off the top of my head). The paper was on the verge of reaching financial break-even and going into profitability in astonishingly short time for such a venture. But a pooh-bah in Los Angeles decided to pull the plug.

The lesson was this: It takes a remarkable conglomeration of talent to create a living organism like New York Newsday or Morning Sedition, but no more than one smug know-it-all to destroy it.

3 Comments:

At 9:56 PM, Blogger ZN said...

Another rudderless Seditionista checking in. Maron is poised to start a new evening radio show next month in LA which he promises will be podcast, and although I'll be listening, it won't be the same. Maron's humor and Riley's insight were a great mix, and Morning Sedition rocked the AM like nothing else ever.

Kicking Maron off the air on the same day as Stern moved to satellite is a blunder of cosmic proportions, for which I can only hope Danny Goldberg will be reincarnated as something chased endlessly by carnivores.

 
At 7:58 AM, Blogger Timcanhear said...

I'm an ad guy for one of the strongest Air America signals in America, a 50,000 watt powerhouse out of the most conservative area of the country, Cincinnati Ohio.
1530 am .. during the day, a 3 state territory and at night, from NY to Miami!
It took me a couple of weeks to get into what was happening on the Morning Sedition, and then, I was hooked. When I heard the news of its demise I was shocked, literally shocked! A sense of depression hit me head on. I wondered how a suit at Air America could make such a blunder.
I was reminded of a morning dj in Chicago, Jonathan Brandmier, who was on WLUP and the station was about to pull the plug after nearly two years on the air. But they knew they had something and opted to keep it on and the rest is history. Brandmier's ratings began to climb and he became a radio star in Chicago and LA.
Mark Maron is onto something big in comedy. I began to think that if given the time and the support, he would overshadow Howard Stern and take over mornings across America now that Stern has opted out of commercial radio. And with that, the country would benefit from his amazing insight and wit.
I can go on forever with acolades to Mark Maron, the socio-political-comedy genius. But what's the point? I mean, if Air America is here to offer something new and challenging, what have they just done and why can't they see the injustice of it?
I want Marc Maron back on Air America radio where he belongs.
Otherwise, we're fighting for ... for what? The progressives have just silenced one of their own.
We get that crap from the right wing opposition all day long.

 
At 8:59 AM, Blogger KenInNY said...

Thanks for sharing, Dan and Tim.

The shame is that all the people who would be feeling as deprived as we are never got to hear the show. As Tim says, it took awhile to get the hang of what the Morning Sedition gang was up to, but isn't that true of almost anything that's genuinely original?

Ken

 

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