The Aerie
Been listening to too much Air America recently, and I'm afraid that I may be losing my mind.
As a progressive, I enjoy the programming itself - except for the pro-Democratic-Party rants against Ralph Nader. No, it's the advertising that's driving me mad.
I can hardly wait until they can improve their advertising sales. It's a motley crew that advertises on Air America right now, and each ad is repeated at practically every break.
Home Depot has a generally well-produced advertisement - nicely mixed, attractive music, etc. Then about halfway through they start to get cocky. "When you buy as much as we do, you can afford to sell for less," the announcer proclaims proudly, "that's the power of buying power." You can hear the sirens in the background as the trenchcoated agents of the Federal Department of Redundancy Department raid the recording studio.
Less well produced is the Verbal Advantage ad, a product that professes to improve your verbal skills. Fair enough. But then the overdramatic announcer tries to be reassuring: use Verbal Advantage, and have "No more embarrassment at how to express yourself."
Couldn't they have thought of a better way to say that? "No longer be embarrassed by clumsy phrasing!"
Then there's Charles Schwab, who speaks for his own corporation:
"When you're dealing with people's [long, odd pause, since the topic of the ad is money] money. When you're dealing with their financial dreams, you've got to hold it with the greatest of care."
What? He's a multibillionaire, and he doesn't know from matching plural nouns with singular pronouns? Fire the staff grammarians! (With $3 billion you could have a staff of grammarians and an estate to house them.) Listening to a multi-billionaire make a grammatical error three times an hour really starts to get under your skin after a while.
And of course there's there pharmaceutical ad for Flonase... a product bearing the Latin name for "Runny nose". My favorite part is when the annoucer proclaims, "Fluticazone proprionate nasal spray, fifty micrograms!" in a perky voice. Very 'Blade Runner'.
Don't get me wrong - Air America is a worthy venture seeking to establish itself... or at least stay in business until November 3rd! And the programs keep me sane while I'm working. But, man, these ads are going to drive me mad.
Posted by Albatross at July 13, 2004 4:06 PMWe don't get "Air America" over here, which is too bad because I would like to listen to some of it. And from from what I've heard from people who have actually tuned in is that it has about an hour of interesting stuff crammed into eight hours of air time. That means that a good editor could condense it down into a palatable, bite size portion of good listening. They could probably start with getting rid of the "we hate Bush" and "we hate Nader" demagoguery and actually focus on some insightful, well thought out and detailed plans to attain their goals beyond election day.
Brad
Posted by: Brad at July 13, 2004 6:24 PMWell, right, but then it would be NPR...
(Except that according to FAIR, NPR is a conservative broadcasting medium as well...
http://www.fair.org/extra/0405/npr-study.html )
To be fair (ha-ha) to Air America, it's not trying to be "insightful, well thought out". It's trying to be reactionary left-wing propaganda, to counterbalance reactionary right-wing propaganda.
The Al Franken show is by far the best program on there. He's extraordinarily knowledgeable (and he's not just taking memos from a research staff either - he can bounce back with figures and citations in the midst of an interview), and he puts a lot of effort into making the show fair, entertaining, and informative.
He's also unrelentingly supportive of the troops and has repeatedly travelled to the Mideast to do USO shows.
The other hosts, well... eh. The afternoon show with Randi Rhodes is three hours of shrill kvetching, and honestly I don't know how she maintains the energy. And the "chemistry" of morning crew leaves me a bit cold.
But Franken is well worth listening to. I hope that he succeeds in getting his show on Armed Forces Radio.
I don't "get it" here, either. I managed to find a way to stream it over the Internet.
Posted by: Albatross at July 14, 2004 7:54 AMOn the grammar issue:
I am currently reading a book that you might be interested in. The title is "Eats Shoots & Leaves - The Zero Tolerance Approach to Punctuation". It was written by Lynne Truss. The publisher is Gotham Books, a subsidiary of the Penguin group. The book is well written, amusing, and should be a must read for students, teachers, and anyone who must communicate with the public using the written word.
Posted by: richard at July 14, 2004 11:07 AMAlbatross, I found your blog because I finally Googled "That's the power of buying power" after being literally driven insane by it on Air Amer.
Can I just say your mention of the Charles Schwab commercial is hilarious? Whenever I hear it, I imagine a focus group compelled to endure multiple test versions of that pause.
As for the programming, I prefer the Majority Report. IMO, they have the best guests.
Cheers!
Posted by: mevo at July 30, 2004 1:36 PM