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 ...

continued on next page

1  |  2

email   password The following comments were posted by our readers and were not edited by SOVO.  We ask that you treat others with respect; any post deemed offensive will be removed.