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| Lesbian hosts Rachel Maddow on weekday mornings and Laura
Flanders (right) on weekend nights bookend the Air America broadcast
schedule. |
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Air America Radio
3 Park Avenue
New York, NY 10016
646-274-4900
www.airamericaradio.com
Air America stations
WWAA 1690 AM, Atlanta
XM Satellite Radio, Channel 167
Sirius Satellite Radio, Channel 144
‘Unfiltered’
9 a.m. to noon, EST
‘Defeating the Gay Panic Defense’
Feb. 23-25
404-730-0195
Sheraton Midtown Atlanta Hotel
Age: 31
Occupation: Co-host of Air America Radio’s ‘Unfiltered,’
9 a.m. to noon weekdays
Relationship status: Long-term partner, artist Susan Mikula
Home: West Cummington, Mass., and New York City
Education: Graduated from Stanford University in 1994; obtained
doctorate in politics at Oxford as a Rhodes Scholar
Activism: AIDS Legal Referral Panel, ACT UP, Empty the Shelters,
and the Women’s AIDS Network in the Bay Area. In Britain, general manager
of the AIDS Treatment Project.
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HOME > SOVO SCENE > FEATURE
By: DYANA BAGBY
COMMENTS |
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HUSTLING ALONG NEW YORK’S Sixth Avenue
on her way to the Air America Radio office on a recent afternoon, Rachel Maddow
explains that what she does as a co-host of the nation’s newest liberal
network morning show “Unfiltered” is not activism.
“It’s radio,” Maddow says while maneuvering through fellow
pedestrians during an interview via cell phone.
“We do political talk. You could call it part of a movement, but not
activism. Activism to me is designing a winnable campaign and implementing it,”
she adds.
As a lesbian, Maddow knows about activism. At 31, she’s already a veteran
activist for gay rights and AIDS causes.
“As a queer kid growing up in San Francisco with AIDS exploding in my
neighborhood, I knew I had to do something,” she says.
At 17, Maddow was volunteering with AIDS service organizations before moving
into prevention.
“AIDS is the defining thing in my life,” Maddow says. “It
makes me understand the world and my place in it.”
While involved with ACT UP! as a teenager, Maddow became involved with a subcommittee
on prisoner’s rights.
“They were a bunch of old lefties who were the most interesting people
I ever met,” she says. “And the battle was real clear — it
was about saving people’s lives who were in state custody.”
Maddow took her political interests into an academic career that included a
Rhodes scholarship. She went to Oxford and earned a Ph.D. in politics. But her
career took a sharp turn while taking time to write her thesis: she tried out
for a radio show on Massachusetts station WRNX.
“I was crashing with friends in Massachusetts, working odd jobs, when
they told me to try out. And they hired me on the spot. Radio came to me, I
didn’t come to it,” she says.
Maddow never hides her sexual orientation and has always been out on the air.
“I don’t make apologies for who I am,” she says. “I
don’t hold back.”
But she admits that she still hears complaints from some listeners if she mentions
being a lesbian.
“I’m as open about my life as any other host but still hear complaints.
[But] I’m talking about torture memos, not sodomy — unless there’s
a Supreme Court decision,” she says.
Another lesbian, Laura Flanders, hosts her own weekend shows from 7 p.m. to
10 p.m. on Air America.
In September, the network began broadcasting in Atlanta on WWAA 1690 AM and
currently averages 28,200 metro listeners a week, according to Arbitron. The
station transmits during the day at 10,000 watts from a tower in Avondale Estates,
but drops to 1,000 watts at night.
“We get a ton of listeners calling from Atlanta,” Maddow says.
“Atlanta gives us an amazing response and tends to be more vocal than
other cities — maybe because you’re in the car so much.”
Maddow and “Unfiltered” co-hosts Lizz Winstead, a co-creator of
“The Daily Show with Jon Stewart,” and Public Enemy rapper Chuck
D are making a career of railing against the Bush administration, the war in
Iraq and Republicans in general. But they also know their job is to make sure
more people continue to tune in.
The three are scheduled to take part in a town hall forum in Atlanta on Feb.
25 as part of a symposium on the gay panic defense hosted by the Fulton County
District Attorney’s office.
Air America serves as a beacon for socially progressive listeners, but the
network faces tough competition from talk radio’s current conservative
landscape of on-air personalities including Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity and
Michael Savage.
A June study from the Washington, D.C-based Democracy Radio, another liberal
radio network featuring Ed Schultz and Stephanie Miller, reported that national
and local conservative programming totaled nearly 42,000 hours every week. Progressive,
or liberal, programming clocks in at just 3,042 hours.
“We’re not just waging a battle,” Maddow says. “We’re
competing for ratings.”
And the competition they offer is stiffer than some critics initially imagined.
Wrapping up its first year on air, Air America Radio is now in 46 markets nationwide
— up from a beginning of only five markets. Its programming also boasts
continuous play on XM and Sirius satellite radio as well as 3.5 million Internet
listeners a month.
That’s a far cry from the network’s early months, when several
bumps in the road made it appear Air America ...
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