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Air America launching March 31st

Air America Radio, the new liberal net, announced in a press conference yesterday it will hit the airwaves March 31st. Big names in the on-air lineup include not only Al Franken, which had been known for some time, but also actress-activist Janeane Garofalo and radio talk veteran Randi Rhodes.

The long-awaited launch date and lineup was announced by the network's star attraction, Franken (12P-3P weekdays), along with network President Jon Sinton, Chairman Evan Cohen and CEO Mark Walsh. Franken, of course, wrote "Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them: A Fair and Balanced Look at the Right," which Fox News had sued him over, and he's long been an outspoken opponent of right wing talkers Bill O'Reilly and Rush Limbaugh.

Air America Radio will debut its programming on radio stations WLIB-AM New York (via a partnership), WNTD-AM Chicago (LMA), KBLA-AM Los Angeles (LMA) and a station in San Francisco to be named before launch. (See Media Markets and Money section for more details.)

Both Sirius and XM are expected to carry all or part of the Air America feed by launch date and negotiations with Dish Network and DirecTV are ongoing, to get on their audio-only channels. The network will also be webcast live and archived via www.airamericaradio.com.

Said Walsh: "Clearly, the great preponderance of Talk radio in America today is right-wing oriented. And we feel that there are listeners out there begging, begging for entertainment, for comedy, for information that varies and is more robust than that which is available today...and our ability to go live 3/31 of this year, in plenty of time to be a rational place for those looking for information about this upcoming election, and many elections to in the future."

Star host Al Franken said he'll be taking the kid gloves off when it comes to President Bush and the right wing: "I'm going to do all the commercials as Rush, so it will be like, 'Friends, I've had every steak in the country and there's none better than the steaks at Ruth's Chris Steakhouse, when I was high on oxycontin.' [click here for the audio] So I hope they'll pay an even higher premium to have Rush do their ads...We're going to put it to Bush. Bush is going down in November and then we'll be putting it to the right wing media...We're going to find their lies everyday and hold them up to scorn and ridicule-which is what I do. Last night I had 3,000 people come see me in Baton Rouge, LA. I've been going to the red states, to the blue states, and people are shall we say, 'upset,' with this administration. To their credit, the right wing has captured radio and we're going after them. We're going to come at them hard."

Air America will offer in-house live national news at the top of the hour, using content from the AP and other sources, to be announced. Local stations will provide one minute of local news, weather as well. There is also a content deal with Salon for the "Salon Story of the Day." The net airs live from 6A-11P in all time zones, tape-delayed on the West Coast. The net will re-purpose/replay Franken and Janeane Garofalo overnight.

National sales will be handled by former D&R Radio Sales President Jacqui Rossinsky and an announcement is forthcoming in the next couple of weeks about adding a national rep firm. "We're in conversations with all the usual suspects and Jacqui will have an announcement on that shortly before or after launch," Sinton tells RBR.

No specific advertisers were disclosed at the conference, but Walsh gave assurances some contracts have been signed. The target demo is Adults 25-54, with a younger skew than traditional talk radio demos. "The markets we're in access more than 20% of gross American households. Sometimes that doesn't reach the level of getting a 'network' buy, but clearly one-fifth of gross American households reached with only a four-market launch is meaningful to a lot of consumer and business brands. So we do expect to get advertising dollars chasing that, with the satellite and web delivery added on as well."

Walsh says they're raised "tens of millions of dollars" for the programming entity. See more in our Media Markets and Money section.

Click Here for the lineup: