Minnesota Independent » Bankruptcy

AM 950 mostly unaffected by Air America’s demise

Chris Steller — Thu, 21 Jan 2010 22:53:12 +0000

AM 950, Minnesota’s progressive talk radio station, won’t be impacted by national distributor Air America filing Chapter 7 bankruptcy Thursday. Air America is KTNF’s source for only one weekday show and a handful of weekend programs, station president Janet Robert tells the Minnesota Independent.

A statement at the Air America website blamed the economy for collapse. The distributor is “ceasing its live programming operations as of this afternoon,” the statement said.

The most immediate casualty that will be apparent on KTNF is ”The Ron Reagan Show,” which aired from 7–8 p.m. on weekdays. “Ring of Fire” is one several weekend Air America shows heard locally.

Robert said she was making calls to try to keep “Ring of Fire.” But that is the only Air America she is pursuing, she said, and she expressed doubt that most Air America programs would find new distributors.

AM 950′s locally- produced shows on the weekday schedule include “The Mark Heaney Show” and “Quick on the UpTake,” with others airing on weekends. The remainder of the station’s programming comes from Air America rival Dial Global, Robert said.

Robert said she was sorry to hear the news. “There are a lot of really nice people there,” she said. “We’re really grateful to them for having launched 24-hour progressive talk radio.”

The independently owned local station began broadcasting on a different signal in 2003 but on March 31, 2004 began carrying much of Air America’s 24-hour program schedule, including Al Franken’s program. The main exception was “The Ed Schultz Show,” distributed by Dial Global.

Over the years, AM 950 got more and more of its programs from Dial Global as popular programs left Air America for its rival distributor. Along the way, Air America filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy, reorganizing under new investors.

Weekday mainstays that will continue to air as usual include shows hosted by Schultz, Bill Press, Stephanie Miller, Thom Hartmann and Mike Malloy.

Chris Steller appears weekly as a guest on “Quick on the UpTake.”

Bankruptcy means Strib can stiff contributors

Paul Schmelzer — Tue, 27 Jan 2009 19:12:12 +0000

How bad have the Star Tribune’s woes gotten? If a tweet by David de Young is any indicator, bad enough that they won’t honor commitments to contributors. The founder of the music site “How Was the Show?,” de Young writes that the newspaper sent him a copy of its “Commencement of Chapter 11″ bankruptcy papers, “which forbids me to ask them for the $75 they owe me for a photo I sold them in 2008.” A week ago, MinnPost’s David Brauer reported that as many as 11 buyout takers were told that their checks would bounce if cashed, and a few days ago, he followed up with news that seven veteran staffers who took buyouts aren’t getting the amount of cash they were promised.

De Young hasn’t yet replied to my query for this piece.

A cold day indeed for Minnesota: It’s bankruptcy for the Star Tribune

Chris Steller — Fri, 16 Jan 2009 03:06:33 +0000

Expected but still momentous. Here’s a snapshot from a first draft of history — the Star Tribune’s telling of its own history, though not a pretty chapter of it (click on the story image to go to the Strib’s latest version):

For the docs see Strib’s reorg info page; for an FAQ see MinnPost’s Braublog.

Tweeting on the brink of bankruptcy: Strib requires bloggers to use Twitter

Paul Schmelzer — Mon, 12 Jan 2009 18:38:16 +0000

With the Star Tribune possibly within two weeks of filing bankruptcy (according to newsroom Guild sources), we’re seeing yet another wave of big-name departures at the Strib: columnist Katherine Kersten, online managing editor Will Tacy and web designer Jaime Chismar, among others. But curiously, if you’re on the microblogging service Twitter, you might get the impression that there’s actually more news coming out of the Strib: word is, all Star Tribune bloggers are required to use Twitter.

Irony abounds here: Amid bankruptcy talk, the paper is looking to a free web tool to save itself? And it’s doing so when the main Strib Twitter feed has remained un-updated since October? (I’m unsure if @startribune, which last posted on Oct. 7, is the paper’s official Twitter feed or if @strib, which shows no followers yet some 8,600 updates, is.) And they’ve got a Twitter account set up for one of those taking a buyout, Chismar of the Greengirls blog?

Scanning through its Twitter accounts, it seems like the paper’s 24 blogs are following the letter of the law, but not the spirit. All sites appear to be updated automatically, mostly through Twitterfeed, instead of via personalized tweets. (While all blogs are on Twitter, it’s unclear that all bloggers themselves are required to contribute. My direct-tweets to various bloggers have gone unanswered.) With wave after wave of buyouts, who can blame those who remain?

In a recent post, Kay Krhin of the parenting blog Cribsheet confirms that all Strib blogs are on Twitter, giving a clue to what you won’t be finding there:

Cribsheet is now on Twitter, along with the rest of the Star Tribune blogs. I know as of right now that May and I won’t be giving you a play by play of our days with things like “Diaper report. Orange. Too many clementine cuties?” or “I just stepped on Lightning McQueen with my bare foot. Spoiler and all. Ow!” We are both feeling a little too blogged down to commit to twittering and add it to our reportoire. BUT if you are one who follows Twitter’s tweets and want to know when we’ve put up a new Cribsheet post. You can sign up and follow us…

Friday Financials: End of “March Madness” means it’s time to file taxes, bankruptcy!

Molly Priesmeyer — Fri, 04 Apr 2008 18:49:19 +0000

The sun is shining. The snow is melting. The soil is finally softening. Oh, and so are those financial markets. But you already knew that. So on this bright Friday, we offer you, dear readers, more light at the end of that dark, long tunnel. The zinc lining in the dark cloud. It’s Friday Financials!