Since it's inception, us level-headed, rational conservatives have predicted that Air America would go under -- there's no doubt that it would have already if it hadn't been propped up by wealthy libs and questionable "loans." Now the blog about the radio biz, Brian Maloney's Radio Equalizer is saying that the death knell for the troubled liberal network has all but sounded and "big fat idiot" Al Franken's bloated salary and the bloated salaries of his staff could be the thing that does them in. Maloney appeared on the O'Reilly Factor on Fox News tonight and posted a column on his blog detailing Air America's financial troubles. Here's a description of the network's ratings problem recited by O'Reilly from a transcript of Maloney's appearance posted on Musing Minds:

O'Reilly: Here are the stats from summer to fall - these are the latest ratings. Franken's program in L.A. in the key demo of 25-54 persons is down 33 percent. In San Francisco, Franken's down 24 percent. In Boston he's down 42 percent. In Portland, Oregon he's down 18 percent. And in San Antonio, Texas they dropped the whole network, Air America, altogether.

What does Franken get for this stellar performance:

During the same mid-to-late 2004 period when Air America parent Piquant LLC was quietly considering how to resolve the still-undisclosed scandal, Franken was demanding everything, including the kitchen sink.

A June, 2004 Wall Street Journal investigative report on Air America stated Al was making "over $1 million a year". That was accurate, but not for long.

Despite mixed reviews, low ratings and a perpetually shaky cash outlook, Franken was handed a virtual blank check by Piquant. Even as the extent of the Gloria Wise crisis became clear to an ever-changing series of managers, Franken pushed ahead anyway with an eye-popping 2005 compensation package.

Included was a staggering base salary boost to $1,725,000, plus fringe benefits and potential bonuses, after less than a year on the air. Nor was his bloated staff left out. The result: what is quite likely talk radio's largest-ever and most overpaid entourage, mostly from the ranks of Al's Harvard research team.

The kicker: Franken successfully insisted the entire base sum be paid in advance, during the first week of January, 2005!

Not a bad gig if you can get it: Suck as a talk show host on a paltry 68 small stations, lose market share, have stations drop your lousy programming and get paid a cool $2 mil plus -- way, way more than talk show hosts with a similar numbers of stations get paid, according to Maloney's research:

To determine what a person heard on between 50 and 100 relatively small stations might make, the Radio Equalizer surveyed syndicated hosts. While such information is usually closely guarded, one national personality told me base compensation of $75,000 to $100,000 would be typical.

Why so little? "Because many national advertisers don't even begin to consider your show until it's heard in many more than just 100 markets," according to the talk host.

So Maloney has more than established that Franken is way overpaid when compared to other mediocre radio hosts in small markets, yet still has the gonads to demand astronomical salary increases and outrageous benefits to give his employer sucky results such as these:

Meanwhile, what was it that made Franken (who, along with the company, has never been willing to speak to Malkin or myself about any of this) so valuable to Air America? It couldn't have been ratings, where his cumulative audience growth for persons 12 and older was zero percent between fall 2004 and spring 2005, according to the company's own Arbitron audience data tabulations. Nationally, he checked in with a whopping 0.1 rating through last October.

Nor could it have been his ability to lure additional stations into the fold, as he was stuck with 68 mostly-tiny stations carrying his show, as of October (by contrast, frequent Franken-target Sean Hannity just celebrated his 500th affiliate sign-up and Rush Limbaugh has more than 600). That's well after he negotiated these huge salary increases and bonuses.

And it wasn't revenue: his show still isn't profitable, despite representing nearly 50% of Air America's entire programming payroll. "Team Franken", representing all of the program's costs, currently sets Air America back over $3 million annually. How could revenues ever be expected to surpass that?

The answer apparently is that they can't which is why the network is propped up by one very generous liberal sugar daddy:

O'Reilly: So I'm not understanding this. If they're not doing well, and they're not, and they're not making any money, they can't sell advertising because they don't have many stations and they're paying huge money to keep their format on these stations... What is it, Rob Glaser? Some millionaire bank-rolling them?

Maloney: That's right. They don't want to give us the victory Bill. {laughs} So what they're doing is Rob is writing the checks. He's very wealthy from Real Networks in Seattle. He is writing big fat checks to keep Air America on the air. The fact is Al Franken is paying his main producer, executive producer, Billy Kimball, $600,000 a year.

O'Reilly: I don't care about that...

Maloney: Who makes that kind of money?

O'Reilly: I just want to, I just want to, so we have one guy Brian [sic] Glaser, a far left guy, like George Soros - unlimited funds - he's keeping this radio network on the air by just kicking money in and paying all the bills. That's where we are, correct?

Maloney: That's right. He had a little bit of money still coming in from the Durst Organization, wealthy property owners in Manhattan, a little bit from that, but a lot of the other guys have bailed out at this point. There's no new Soros money and he knows better now.

So it appears that at least the liberals are true to their principles: Not only do they believe in using welfare to pay "poor" people to be unproductive, they believe in welfare to pay crappy liberal radio networks with lousy, demanding prima donna "stars" who no one listens to to stay on the air simply because they believe that talk radio needs "balance". I hate to break this to Glaser, but even with all his money, he'll go broke if he continues to bankroll this crappy liberal network.

It's exactly as us conservatives have been saying all along: The radio talk show business is market driven and people don't like the crap that passes for liberal talk radio. The country is predominantly conservative, the three top national radio talk show hosts -- Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity and Glenn Beck -- are conservative and there are literally dozens of other successful nationally-syndicated conservative talk show hosts. Unlike Air America, these shows make money hand over fist. Air America has already gone down: If it weren’t for Glaser’s money, it would have gone under long ago. As soon as he wises up and pulls his funds, Air America will be forced to pull the plug – and long before 2008 when Franken is slated for a $1 million increase in salary.