Art Machine
Just another former infatuation junkie

Over at Thudfactor, Thud is blogging about some customer satisfaction issues. He’s not renewing Xbox live after his free trial is over – and for good reason. He’s not happy with corporate practices that result from executives being paid in spite of their job performance rather than having to, y’know, actually succeed or anything.

And he’s also not happy with Air America Radio.

Maddow’s show is still informative. She is very smart, and she is still concerned about very important issues — like our failing national infrastructure — that most news outlets (or blogs) ignore. But Kent Jones was the comic relief that made the show fun and funny. It’s not fun and funny any more.

Air America has not, as near as I can tell, responded in any way to Kent Jones’ fans. They certainly didn’t respond to me when I wrote and complained — politely. I will miss the Rachel Maddow Show but I think I will be canceling my Air America Premium subscription. There just isn’t anything worth the money any more. And I think the management at Air America resents their (erstwhile) fans. We don’t like to listen to what they think we should like.

Recently, I decided to cancel my subscription to Air America Premium, as well – for pretty much the same reasons. Al Franken no longer broadcasts there (not strictly their fault – he left to run for public office, after all), nor does Chuck D. Every show I came to like in the early days of Air America has pretty much closed up shop. Garafalo’s show never really came of age, but I enjoyed it – and it’s gone. As is the Morning Sedition.

In fact, the one show that I still listen to on Air America is The Young Turks, which still manages to be good even after the departure of Ben Mankiewicz. My brother doesn’t care much for their show, but it’s remained the one point on the Air America dial that kept me coming back.

Which is why, after a year of schedule shake-ups from the management at Air America, I decided I didn’t need their premium podcast plan any more – particularly not the Gold package that gave me access to all of the programming I didn’t really want. Sorry, but I’ve just never been able to get into Randi Rhodes. I just couldn’t justify the expense to subscribe to a package that might decide to take away the one show I liked midway through my subscription.

Instead, I decided to turn around and give my subscription money directly to The Young Turks. By subscribing to their website, I get access to both video and audio of each of their shows, including an audio podcast that comes directly from the show instead of being Air America’s copy (Air America, by the way, has been notorious for lousy quality in their audio archives). In addition, my subscription goes to help finance the show, bringing it one step closer to complete independence. The Young Turks has set the ambitious goal of being completely independent, funded by its subscribers instead of being beholden to the whims of sponsors or flighty networks.

I love progressive radio, and I still love the movement that Air America represented in talk – but the execution still needs some works. In the meantime, I’m tuning my iPod into the Turks.

Edited to note: On the plus side, Air America makes leaving incredibly easy. All it took was a couple of link clicks and I was informed that once my current subscription commitment expires (January 8), my subscription will not renew. At least they got something right.

This entry was posted on Monday, December 31st, 2007 at 1:39 pm and is filed under Consumerism, Politics, Tech. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.