Riled-up DWT readers take aim at the grinch who stole Morning Sedition

Imagine my surprise and delight to find extended, impassioned comments from DWT readers Dan and Timcanhear regarding my note on coping with the loss of Air America Radio's Morning Sedition program.

Since I was attempting to be temperate (yeah, "even the most cretinous brain-dead empty-suit exec would be embarrassed to spout such screeching drivel" is, in its way, my way of being temperate--ya wanna make sumpin' of it?), I encourage everyone to read the comments of these two MS (ex-)listeners who weren't pulling punches.

Dan, for example, suggests: "Kicking [cohost Marc] 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."

Really, I shouldn't have been surprised to hear from other "rudderless Seditionistas" (as Dan describes our breed), because it was abundantly clear to anyone who was paying attention that the show's listeners were wildly loyal. The problem was the failure to bring the show to the attention of all those people who might have become passionate listeners. Let me say again that I don't recall ever seeing or hearing the show name in any Air America Radio promotions except the occasional on-air mention.

I'm always amused by TV and film marketers who obviously think their job is to trick unsupecting viewers into seeing stuff that nobody in his right mind would want to. Have you noticed how wildly most movie previews misrepresent the actual films? You can't even tell which of those crappy-looking films might actually be worth taking a look at.

As I understand it, this is because the people who make movie trailers—an incredibly specialized, high-stakes business—work according to a set of rules about what they believe audiences want to see. All the promotion is then geared toward tricking those suckers into thinking that this turkey is it.

Doesn't anyone ever worry about what the product's real virtues are? That is, assuming the product has real virtues—though if it doesn't, then why the hell was all that money spent to produce the damned thing in the first place? Wouldn't all that promotional money be better spent trying to communicate those real virtues to people who might appreciate them?

Of course that means someone involved in the promotional effort has to know what those virtues are. Which brings us back to the Air America case.

Blogiologically, I approached the subject with some diffidence, because I hardly ever remember mentioning the show to anyone who'd even heard of it. For one, I never managed to interest DWT in it. (Of course, he's on the West Coast, and Air America never figured out what to do about the time difference. The most frequent solution, when West Coast affiliates even carried the show, was to broadcast it in real time—i.e., 3am-6am PT.)

Tim makes the useful observation that it took him awhile to get what the show was up to. To which I would add: Isn't this usually true of any form or format that's genuinely original?

After all, the MS team was actively engaged in inventing whatever the heck the show was—throughout its all-too-brief run. For example, one of my great regrets was that one of the three original cohosts, the deliciously lively and articulate and cheerily blunt Sue Ellicott, seems to have decided early on that there wasn't enough room in the broadcast booth for her and went back to England (where her kids also were). Sue was a great loss to Air America, but she was probably right about her role on MS. I notice, though, that none of the supposed future plans for her with Air America came to fruition either.

MS wound up with a great team in place, with cohosts Maron and Mark Riley and all the writers and performers, not to mention the behind-the-scenes people, including the bright, energetic and passionate young producing and engineering crew. I don't want to mindlessly bad-mouth Air America. Lots of good things happen on it, and it has already made an incalculable contribution to the political landscape. But dumb is dumb, and it was Air America management's job to understand what it had created and nurture it.

Tim offers an apt counter-example: "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."

So how's this for a scenario, in the holiday spirit of It's a Wonderful Life: Air America management extracts its head from its butt and announces that it was all a mistake, the cancellation of Morning Sedition, that that was just a scenario that could have happened and the show will be back on the air as soon as the MS team can be reassembled.

Right now for a lot of us it's kind of a sucky life in the morning. And as far as I can see, there's just no good reason.