To Right Itself, WRC Looks Left

Al Franken will join the mostly conservative talk radio voices heard in Washington as Air America debuts Thursday on WWRC (1260 AM). (Gregory Bull -- AP)

When Air America, the year-old effort to create a liberal alternative to largely conservative talk radio, debuts in Washington Thursday, it can't possibly do anything but improve the ratings for WWRC (1260 AM).

The station, which airs syndicated sports talk programming primarily from Fox Sports, has not registered at all in recent ratings books. So Clear Channel Communications, which also owns Sports Talk 980 (WTEM), had nothing to lose by trying out the fledgling network that features the talk stylings of Al Franken, Randi Rhodes and Janeane Garofalo.

Despite the heavily blue voting character of the Washington area, standard AM talk shows, which skew red, win strong ratings here. Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity do well on WMAL (630 AM). But there are signs that Washington listeners want an alternative: The generally liberal talk shows on National Public Radio win unusually good ratings in this market, and the left-libertarians of raunch radio -- Howard Stern and Don & Mike on WJFK (106.7 FM) -- do very well, too.

Does that mean Washington will embrace liberal talk? Hard to say. In other heavily Democratic cities where Air America has been around for some months, the ratings record is inconsistent, but it does show a generally lukewarm response to the project.

Air America's broadcasts are heard mainly on AM stations with weak signals and low-rent dial positions, so the programming starts out with two strikes against it. But Air America has scored some high-profile outlets, such as WINZ in Miami, another Clear Channel-owned station that now bills itself as "South Florida's Progressive Talk." (Conspiracy theories about Clear Channel's conservative bias in programming tend to collapse now that the company is moving aggressively into liberal talk.) So far, Air America in Miami lags far behind both the Rush Limbaugh-Sean Hannity conservative talker in town and the sports talk station.

Air America stations have also made little progress in Denver, Minneapolis and San Francisco, where Franken and company remain the fourth- ranked talk station, behind three conservative-dominated competitors; Philadelphia, where Air America's station ranks fourth among five talk stations; Boston, where the Air America outlet is the fifth and least popular talk station in town; and New York, where WLIB has failed to topple Limbaugh and Hannity on WABC.

Air America's biggest success has come in Portland, Ore., a dependably liberal town where the programming has become the most popular talk on the radio. The liberal talk airs on a Clear Channel-owned station there as well, and its revenues have quadrupled since it flipped to Air America, easily surpassing Limbaugh in that market.

Clear Channel's Washington managers are not exactly brimming with confidence about their latest format for 1260 AM, which in recent years has tried simulcasting CNN, a business news format and easy listening music, all to no effect. WWRC has decided to put Air America shows on the station for only part of the day. A simulcast of Don Imus's talkfest, which airs on Clear Channel's WTNT (570 AM), will get the coveted morning drive-time slot, and evenings will continue to be made available for Wizards games and other play-by-play sports coverage.