Category: Northern Alliance

Don’t forget that the Northern Alliance Radio Network will be broadcast in the Twin Cities this afternoon, as usual on Saturdays, between noon and 3 PM. I suspect that one topic we may indulge will be a little Schadenfranken over the continuing debacle over at Err America. As the Chicago Tribune reported yesterday, more ra — er, people seem to be deserting the sinking ship while others insist on rearranging the deck furniture:

In yet another sign of trouble for Air America Radio, the liberal talk network’s co-founder and chairman, Evan Cohen, resigned Thursday along with his investment partner and vice chairman, Rex Sorensen.
The company also failed to make its scheduled payroll Wednesday, leaving its staff of roughly 100 writers and producers unpaid until Thursday. …
“We’re on a wild ride,” said Jon Sinton, the network’s president, acknowledging that Air America has suffered “the typical bumps and bruises faced by any start-up.”
“But the bottom line,” he said, “is that we are on the air to stay.”

Let’s see — we take a bunch of socialistic, anticapitalist, antiglobalist activists and have them form an entertainment corporation in order to rail against corporate power … and then they can’t make payroll? What a shocker!
I guess George Soros finally listened to their programming.
Mitch Berg notes other indications that their business plan had significant defects from the start:

1. They’ve been on the air five weeks. And they’re already sucking pond water.
2. Let me read that again. Did it really say “100 writers and producers” to produce 17 hours of weekday programming (and maybe 8-10 more on the weekends)? No, I must have mis-read that…
…er, no, it does say 100 writers and producers. To produce six weeday and three weekend programs. A lavish commercial talk operation would hire, er, maybe six producers, four engineers, and maybe some interns to screen the calls.
Simply amazing.

It’s Saturday and time for another installment of the Northern Alliance Radio Network, from noon to 3 pm CT. In the third hour today, we will be debating which pop songs represent the worst of pop music, an argument that started with Blender Magazine’s 50 Worst Songs of All Time (complete list here). Blender, however, demonstrated its complete ineptitude by including such songs as “Sounds of Silence” by Simon and Garfunkel and “Longer” by Dan Fogelberg. Even if you don’t particularly like those songs, you can’t argue that they’re the 42nd and 30th worst songs of all time!
Here’s my list of songs which I will be taking to the AM 1280 The Patriot studio in a few minutes, in no particular order except at #1, which is the worst song of all time, bar none:
1. I’ve Never Been To Me – Charlene
2. 99 Luftballoons – Nena
3. The Night Chicago Died – Paper Lace
4. Chick a Boom (Don’t Ya Jes’ Love It)
5. Me & You & A Dog Named Boo – Lobo
6. Mickey – Toni Basil
7. Bonnie and Clyde – Georgie Fame & The Flames
8. Billy Don’t Be A Hero – Bo Donaldson and the Heywoods
9. Don’t Give Up On Us Baaaaaay-Beh – David Soul
I’ve also thrown in “Afternoon Delight” by the Starland Vocal Band, as JB Doubtless and I will defend the savage attacks on this sparkling example of four-part harmony from the rest of the Alliance. “Midnight At The Oasis” may also make an appearance, although I suspect I may find myself alone in Maria Muldaur’s defense on that one.
Later on today, I’ll blog on why I think “Billy Don’t Be A Hero” is John Kerry’s campaign theme song …

Today, on the Northern Alliance Radio Network show (heard on AM 1280 The Patriot in the Twin Cities, and soon on the Internet to the world!), we have a special in-studio guest for our third hour. The Fraters Libertas gang has lined up Mike Nelson of Mystery Science Theater 3000, who has graciously agreed to sit in with our line-up of fanboys. Because the Captain lost the coin-flip (and allegedly too closely resembles Dr. Clayton Forrester), I’ll be banished to the Green Room during the third hour. So I will be live photoblogging Mike Nelson’s visit on this post — keep checking back during the show (12-3 CT) for updates!
We will also be fortunate to have as call-in guests during the second hour Yale professor Charles Hill on John Kerry as a literary character, and Doug Tice from our local newspaper, the St. Paul Pioneer Press. If you’re in the area, make sure you tune in!
2:00 — Mike Nelson has just joined us, and we’ll get some pictures in a moment. We’re just settling in, and we’ve just heard that he’s a Northen Alliance listener — how cool is that? ….

2:08 — Mike starts us off, talking about the Hah channel and the early days of the show …
2:13 — Manos, The Hands of Fate … the legendary film that rates as the finest bad movie ever made! Now it’s the target of revisionary criticism that says it’s actually a GOOD movie. And I admitted that I am one of the three people that actually liked Throw Mama From The Train …
2:25 – Saint Paul calls in to ask about the lack of promotion in the early days of MST3K, after he griped about being on hold for 20 minutes. What can we say? We’re popular! …

2:29 – A caller says he loves the show, and it takes us all a minute to figure out which show he means. (It wasn’t ours — big surprise.) ….
2:30 – We’re all pleased to welcome Hugh Hewitt as a guest host for the third hour …
2:35 – Mike issues a smack-down challenge to Al Franken, as well as Christina Aguilera and Kathryn Lampher …
2:41 – Mike’s never seen Battlefield Earth — I’m crushed …
2:44 — By the way, I’m actually in studio for this hour, in case you haven’t caught on to that. It’s a blast, and Mike is a great guest …
2:50 – Mike hasn’t moved to LA because he likes living where “the deep, dark winters dull your souls.” …
2:51 – Mike also thinks that cow-tipping is a rumor, but unfortunately the belief that pigs will devour live chickens is all too true …
2:54 – Mike is not a “show-biz guy”, and his politics don’t exactly match up with the Hollywood crowd. Mike’s also a devout Christian, which makes him a zoo animal in some circles … Here he is hanging out with Hugh Hewitt. Mike is pretty tall, so he had to hunch over to get in the picture…
3:00 — A great hour with a great guest. We’ll definitely get Mike back on when we have our Internet feed running so everyone gets a chance to hear it. Thanks for hanging out with us this hour!

As most of you already know, the Northern Alliance of Blogs stepped in for Hugh Hewitt as he went on a top-secret mission at one of our nation’s fine military colleges, the Naval Academy at Annapolis. (We’re not entirely sure about this mission, but the Elder claims that he has the goods, complete with pictures.) The Northern Alliance took over Hugh’s show on both Tuesday and Wednesday evenings, driving his listeners to consider Dead-Air America as their back-up radio choice in the event Hugh takes any more time off — even though they were playing Marcel Marceau’s Greatest Hits (Dance Remix Version) all night Wednesday in LA.
I can’t tell you how much fun it is to be in a radio studio with terrific guys like the Elder and JB from Fraters Libertas, King Banian from SCSU Scholars, and Big Trunk and Hindrocket (who was unfortunately out of town for our national debut) from Power Line. I got to meet James Lileks for the first time, he of the mellifluous voice and lightning-quick wit (George Soros is Ernst Blofeld? How the heck does he do that?). If you’ve read his Bleat, then you have a good sense of the man: friendly, intelligent, gracious, and willing to chat at length with me as soon as I bought a $25 autograph. I can only read the J, dang it! But most of all, Mitch Berg from Shot In The Dark deserves the credit for handling the center position like the pro he is. He was fabulous, and he’s just as good on our weekend show, too.
The Elder posted his thoughts on the show earlier today at Fraters Libertas:

And it was a helluva lot of fun. Working with Generalissimo Duane was a pleasure. He is a true radio professional and knows his craft well. He also has a tremendous sense of humor and, as often happens on our Saturday show, many of the best lines and much of the best conversation took place off the air during breaks. Best of all Duane played his own bumps, not the musical flotsam and jetsam that Hugh usually subjects his listeners to. Thank you Generalissimo.

Duane truly made us as good as we can be — insert your own joke here — and not only kept us on track but kept us calm, relaxed, and focused. At the same time, he had no problem joining in the fun and foolishness of the moment and pushed us to be ourselves on the air. I thank you, Duane, and sorry about the peasants with pitchforks and torches outside your house that we somehow inspired. And thanks again for taking us out with “Tijuana Jail,” a great Kingston Trio record. I wanted to cement my reputation as a world-class square, especially after endorsing “Tom Dooley” the night before.
But most of all, I want to thank Hugh, and no kidding — we’ve done five local shows total and he gave up six prime-time hours to this bunch of amateurs, a real leap of faith. I challenge you to find a radio talk-show host that would turn his show over to a group of his fans like he has, or that would use his influence to create two local radio shows like he did out here this winter with us and Dwight Rabuse. I’m still amazed at his generosity, and now that I’ve gone through a bit of the prep that he does, I’m even more amazed at the consistently high quality of his show.
Thanks for tossing us the mike, Hugh and Duane. Hope we took good care of it for you.
If you caught the show on the air or over the Internet, I’d love to hear from you — drop me a comment with your reviews!

If you’re listening to Mark Larson filling in for Hugh Hewitt, just an FYI — none of the Northern Alliance are college students. I’m the father of a college student, and King at SCSU Scholars is a college professor, but none of us are students, to my knowledge.
I wouldn’t mind being the oldest freshman on campus, though. I watched “Old School” with Will Farrell and Luke Wilson. I could handle that whole wrestling scene. Fraternities should contact me as soon as possible for party scheduling …

Don’t forget that we’re on the air this afternoon on AM 1280 The Patriot — and we’ll have big news during the show!

It’s Saturday, so it’s time for another installment of the Northern Alliance Radio Network. Unfortunately, I won’t be there today — I have a prior commitment at an Irish-language workshop. (I’ve got to post on that later on …) The rest of the gang will be there, reviewing the week’s news stories, interviewing important guests, and dissecting the local media. Be sure to tune in if you’re in the area.

Just a quick note to let everyone know that Mitch Berg’s fine site, Shot In The Dark, had its ISP disappear out from underneath him yesterday — and it took his domain name with it, at least temporarily. His site can be accessed at http://www.shotinthedark.info … be sure to update your blogrolls and bookmarks!

It’s Saturday, so it must be time for another installment of the Northern Alliance Radio Network! Today we have two fascinating guests: Kenneth R. Timmerman and Thomas Lipsomb. Timmerman wrote the fascinating book, The French Betrayal of America, which I have just started — my Reagan book will have to wait, I’m afraid. Lipscomb has reported on John Kerry’s involvement in the Phoenix Project, an assassination plot that targeted pro-war American politicians in a 1971 meeting, which Kerry at first categorically denied and then was forced to recant after contemporaneous FBI reports placed him there.
If you’re in our listening area, make sure you tune into AM 1280 The Patriot from noon to 3 PM today!

Once again, we gasbags bloggers of the Northern Alliance march bravely down to AM 1280 The Patriot to do our weekly radio show. We’re trying to find a streaming service that won’t charge us an arm and a leg for a three-hour stint once a week (most of them charge a flat monthly rate based on 24-hour-a-day usage), so that you can tune in, turn on, and drop in. With any luck, in a couple of weeks, we’ll be live on the Internet.
Until then, I’ll be live-blogging again today, where we’ll be discussing topics such as John Kerry’s accusations against Bush and the Republicans, the Madrid bombing and what it might mean for the war on terror, the launch of the liberal radio network AirAmerica, our weekly Hack Columnist of the Week in the Twin Cities, and JB Doubtless and I will debate the artistic merits of Mel Gibson’s The Passion of the Christ. We’ll also have live guests (as opposed to dead ones?) during our second hour, plus lots of callers to keep us on our toes.
Keep checking back on this post for the live blogging!
12:01 – Getting the prep done — our first topic will be Madrid and the wider war on terror …
12:18 – First break — Fox News reports that Spanish intelligence is 90% sure that the bombing was al-Qaeda and not ETA, according to Mitch…
12:31 – Second break. Now we’re fully into the presidential campaign again, talking about the polls that show 60% of the American public think that terrorists want John Kerry to win the election — but that doesn’t translate to more support for Bush, interestingly enough …
12:47 – Third break – Interesting couple of callers. One caller thought that Kerry would be off the ticket by the convention and alluded to a Hillary “white knight” arrival on the scene …
1:07 – Sharon Yecke is on the air now via phone, talking about educational standards with Hindrocket and Trunk in the studio and King (from SCSU Scholars) on the phone. Sharon makes a good guest …
1:29 – The Elder and I are having a better discussion in the Green Room than we can put on the air — it’s easier, of course, to keep the conversation on track when it’s just two people and no one listening. We got an e-mail last segment scolding us for using our nicknames, calling us cowards — of course, it was an anonymous e-mail. ROFL…
1:41 – Spain announced five arrests in the bombing — three Moroccans and two Spaniards of “Hindu” origin. (via Instapundit) …
2:00 – Getting back in studio for the third hour, discussing Gibson’s Passion …
2:15 – I’m getting creamed by JB on this Passion issue …
2:45 – The callers have been supportive of me, so apparently I didn’t do all that bad … or at least, I didn’t hurt my cause. One of the callers was DC from Brainstorming — you were great!!!
I’m shutting it down for now, but I’ll be back to blogging later this afternoon from the First Mate’s dialysis center!