Whad'ya know? Just got home, decided to surf the web a little while my Easter dinner digests (damn these holidays are brutal...), and lo and behold - Sam Seder has just posted a goodbye message on his blog, announcing the end of his weekday show and the pending debut of his new Sunday show. Here's an excerpt:
It is with a heavy heart that I must announce that this week will be the last week of the Sam Seder Show on Air America. As you know, Air America recently came out of Chapter 11 bankruptcy and the new management wants to go in a different direction with the 9-Noon (est) time slot. However, as much as I would like to spend more time with Alberto Gonzales’ family, he will be doing so shortly, freeing me up to do a Sunday afternoon show on Air America Radio. The show is tentatively known as Seder on Sundays and I am excited to get it started.
I am very proud of the three years I have broadcast on Air America Radio. I am particularly proud of the Sam Seder Show. We started the show as AAR was entering bankruptcy, when things around here were pretty hectic and insecure. The Sam Seder juggernaut, as no one but me called us, was able to maintain all of our affiliates that stayed with the progressive format through our bankruptcy. While it’s a bit early to judge, (our first full “book” is out in a couple of weeks) our ratings were looking pretty good and we dramatically increased AAR’s streaming numbers during this time slot. Most importantly, though, was the support and response we received from you, our audience. You'll never know just how helpful and motivating your comments, calls, emails and letters have been to me and my family and I greatly appreciate it.
Continued at blog.
Sam can be reached by email via his blog, or you can leave a comment there as well.
Sunday, April 08, 2007
Seder says goodbye... for now
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Eureka, CA 
6 comments:
And the Miltonification of Sam Seder has begun, just as they did with Marc Maron -- consign him to a backwater just to keep the audience quiet until they run out of righteous indignation and then kick him out the door.
I don't know what the audience that the Green brothers are going for is, but they sure as hell are doing everything they can to alienate the audience that AAR has had up to this point. We'll see what happens when it turns out that there isn't an audience to replace us.
I podcast Sam and Randi Rhodes and that's it. And I don't even listen to Randi's podcasts much of the time. Without Sam, I may not podcast at all. I don't listen to AAR at home anymore (and we used to have it on ALL THE TIME while at home), largely because their current NY affiliate, WWLR, has no range. When Morning Sedition was first cancelled, it was like going through withdrawal. Now I listen more to WXPK, WFUV, and occasionally WNYC. I'm adjusting to life without AAR, and I suspect I'm not alone.
It's really a shame, too, because for two years they had some of the most entertaining content on radio that we'd heard in a long time.
But there's only so long they can say "Go Cheney yourselves" to their audience before we start saying it back to them.
Of course the radio "experts" will tut-tut that Seder wasn't getting "clearances" and/or ratings, even though there isn't a full book out, and Sam held on to all the affiliates that didn't change format (after the time slot was killed by Springer after AAR killed Unfiltered - no doubt the experts nodded in solemn approval at that move, too).
Have any of the AAR programming changes actually resulted in more listeners?
No, not really.
Of course, we will have to wait and see how Hartmann does on the stations which have picked up his show from the main AAR feed.
But AAR NOT changing hasn't resulted in more listeners either.
More listeners have resulted in STATIONS making changes.
AAR replaced Unfiltered with Jerry because stations were replacing Unfiltered with Stephanie Miller.
They dropped Jerry because stations kept on replacing Jerry with Steph.
And stations which made those changes did get more listeners.
But AAR's MO seems to be, if a show isn't performing the way they want it to, dump it, and replace it with something that will do even worse.
But, hey, maybe they've got Imus all lined up.
was a real interesting show blog today, people from all over the states signing in. all of them PO'ed.
http://tinyurl.com/2q3ecr
no consistent opinion on what the reasons for the drop are.
I think I'll just go listen to Whoopi. At least I'll be entertained.
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