Air America shuffles morning lineup

Looking to make its mornings more competitive, Air America Radio is dropping “Morning Sedition” from its lineup and replacing it with a new reformatted morning block, beginning January 3.

“Air America Mornings” will consist of a pair of separate two-hour programs. Current “Morning Sedition” co-host Mark Riley will highlight the day’s top news stories and interview guests from 5-7 a.m., followed from 7-9 a.m. by “The Rachel Maddow Show,” which the network describes as “fast paced news and witty sound bites,” along with guest interviews.

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The network also hopes to capitalize on the ratings growth of Maddow’s show. Currently heard from 5-6 a.m., it climbed from a 0.3 to a 1.7 in summer among adults on WLIB-AM, the network’s flagship in New York. Maddow, one of the original co-hosts of AAR’s former late-morning show, Unfiltered, has more recently guest-hosted Franken’s show and is a regular contributor to MSNBC’s The Situation with Tucker Carlson.

In reformatting morning drive, the liberal talk network heard on 72 stations is breaking up the Mark Riley and Marc Maron team. Returning to Los Angeles, Maron is in talks with Air America to host his own syndicated show. He will be a regular morning show contributor.

Former VH1 VP of music programming Paul Marszalek is joining the net as morning show executive producer. Marszalek has programmed Susquehanna triple A KFOG San Francisco and worked in the programming department at Infinity triple A WXRT Chicago.

“We are committed to generating at least one show in 2006 from Los Angeles to connect us more closely with the progressive creative community there, and thus to offer our affiliates a widening menu of politics, comedy, information and entertainment,” said Gary Krantz, president for AAR.

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