Air America crashes for the last time.

Several hours ago, Air America announced it has ceased all programming and is terminating operations, effective immediately. That's fine by the werewolf. From all reports, it possessed heinous programming. Even the werewolf's liberal friends trashed it.

From it's very inception, Air America struck him as an unviable business operation because it wasn't founded to fulfill a legitimate market need. Beyond all other things, business is only worth pursuing if there is demonstrable market demand for it on some level. Air America, spat in face of common business sense and the marketplace, and was founded because a few liberals, accustomed to their inherited print and television media monopolies, couldn't figure out why they didn't have a stronger radio format presence. First of all, the fact that these investors were blind to the publicly subsidized presence of NPR as the 800lb gorilla of liberal radio makes the fact that they got cleaned out and lost their money very amusing. He's impressed that it took six years for Air America to crash for the last time. The werewolf listens to NPR semi-frequently, and thinks on occasion their programming is decent from a human interest perspective, although anyone with a GED could spot their analysis is unabashedly left-of-center. (Not a bad thing, just the way it is, as most talk radio formats are right-of-center) They are unquestionably the voice of uninhibited liberalism on America's airwaves and most of their market is the hoity-toity urbanites and other liberals making their morning and evening commutes. From a corporate governance perspective, it shocks the werewolf that this facet of the strategic landscape was not considered before launching Air America and it stinks of a professional liability suit somewhere along the line. The market Air America went after was fully saturated. The proof is in the pudding as the nails have been driven into the coffin of Air America and NPR is trucking along just fine. The question the werewolf has, would NPR be able to survive if it weren't publicly subsidized? Alas, he gets ahead of himself.