I thought Tom Hartman was joining Air America.

[RethugAssKicker]

They have a banner which states that he will be on from noon - 3Pm Eastern Time... but boring AL is still on. Whats the deal?

[NYCGirl]

1. Hartmann is on Air America Syndication, a different entity.

Maybe your local station will pick up his show.

[LisaM]

2. I'm listening to him right now!

He's great.

[drbtg1]

3. From Mr. Hartmann himself on his message board

http://www.thomhartman.com/ubb/ultimatebb.php?/ubb/get_topic/f/5/t/003145.html


Hey, everybody,

Thanks for the kind words! Here's what's happening.

My show is going to stay pretty much just the same as it always has, from a listener's point of view. Same time, same stations, still on Sirius, same streams, etc.

In addition, Air America will be selling the ads for us (whew!) and take over the work of getting new affiliate radio stations. In a month or so, we'll also be on their satellite in addition to the Jones satellite. And they're going to take our Friday show and run it on the network on Sundays from 10am to 1 pm ET, including WLIB in NYC.

I'm not replacing Al Franken, but competing with him (and Rush, etc.), as I have been all along. Stations can carry his show or mine. Most will choose his show, as he's a Big Star and does a great show, but in some markets (like Santa Cruz, which has two liberal stations) he and I go head-to-head in the same time slot.

This is sort of like Talk Radio Network, who syndicates Laura Ingraham and Michael Savage. They have, as I recall, three full streams of simultaneous conservative talkers that stations can choose from, and often in a larger city 3 stations will carry each of one of their 3 talents at the same time. Air America gets stronger, I don't have to do sales work any more (horray!) and can concentrate on doing a good show, and our "regular" listener's don't notice a difference, other, possibly, than that our toll-free number may change when Air America picks up mixing our show from NY instead of Portland (I'll still be in Portland, but our board operator will be in New York).

Hope that helps sort things out...

Thom

PS. Here's a link to the news release about it all:
http://www.radioink.com/headlineentry.asp?hid=130402&pt=inkheadlines




Well, frankly, I think it's a good thing if both Al and I are around and available for people to listen to. Our styles are very different, but we both bring something good to the table, IMHO.

As to the XM question, as far as I know, I'll continue to be on Sirius only. Those people who want Sirius to carry all 3 hours live, instead of time delaying hours 2 and 3, can drop a note to their head of programming for that dchannel at [e-mail] .

Thom



edit-sorry, I don't know what the HTML quote tags are here.

[RethugAssKicker]

4. Thanks... that explains it.