Air America announced today, with little fanfare, that it is ceasing operations and filing bankruptcy, citing “tough economic times” as the reason. Quite honestly, I’m shocked that they didn’t blame Bush. Or global warming.

It’s not the economy, stupid.

Talk radio continues to thrive and do exceptionally well – in the conservative market. There is a reason for this, and it has nothing to do with unfairness but everything to do with the free market.

Mainstream media operates little more than a mouthpiece for the current administration. Every nightly news anchor from Katie Couric to Brian Williams have an acknowledged bias – different from people like Keith Olbermann and Glenn Beck who have admitted biases, whose programming operates not as news, but as op/ed. Newspapers more often than not also have a slant – this according to a Pew Research Center poll:

Seventy-four percent said news organizations tend to favor one side in dealing with political and social issues. Eighteen percent said they deal fairly with all sides.

The accompanying headline for this poll? “Public Trust in US Media Eroding.”

Why is it eroding? Because people aren’t sheep; they recognize the bias. If I want bias I’ll turn on Chris Matthews or Sean Hannity – at least they admit it; journalists like the aforementioned refuse to acknowledge what the public knows anyway and continues to operate under the mistaken assumption that they are delivering objective news and when they aren’t, no one can tell.

Because of this, why would people want to turn the dial to admittedly biased radio programming that is little more than an echo of what they hear on television or read in the paper? Liberal talk on the radio doesn’t perform well because it is not a sequestered to a niche – it’s everywhere. Conservative talk radio performs well because it is the only place, besides Fox News, one channel,  that people can go for right sphere opinions.

The difference in the reaction between the right and left is that the left demands a renewal of the Fairness Doctrine as a way to survive on the radio while the right demands no such thing of the television and newspaper industries – the latter of whom are requesting public financing or tax credits. NPR gets taxpayer dollars and still slants to the left, as evidenced by their recent “Learn to Speak Tea Bag” video.

Liberal radio performs poorly because their format dominates other markets and will continue to perform poorly as a result.