Al's hot air.

• Author: Kovash, Jon
• Position: Letters to the Editor - Letter to the Editor

Yes, we all love Al Franken, but some of his conventional wisdom about the radio biz should not go unchallenged (Interview by Stephen Thompson, September issue). Franken postulates that liberal talk radio has had no "farm team" of local talents who can move on to become experienced radio veterans.

Al, a pool of radio-trained liberal advocates has existed for decades. There is a vast army of public radio news and talk producers (I'm one of them) who are chronically underpaid and underemployed. We are among the most experienced and skilled because our competition is robot-driven commercial radio. From the beginning, Air America's backers and architects copped a serious attitude about public radio. Well, they got it half right.

It's true that the "corporate" side of public radio, the boring, big city, NPR station side, has been co-opted into just another electronic McNews aggregator. But the United States still has hundreds of community stations that give free rein and training to thousands of radio producers of every stripe.

Don't get me wrong, Al--I love your books and wish Air America the best. But I don't think you guys have listened to much community radio, and you should. It is the only remaining broadcast medium where anybody can get on, without a lot of PC gatekeepers, where there is...