Drobny: Greed, Not Debt, Did Air America In

Now it comes out, in an explosive Huffington Post article, that AAR was just another "liberal" corporate clusterf--k. I'm not surprised. I've been watching radio bring out the worst in people since age 9.

Air American Radio: An Example of Ego and Crony Capitalism

12.23.2006

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The positive news is that about 100 radio stations have now committed themselves to progressive talk radio and many of the listeners have demanded that their communities continue to carry non-conservative talk radio. AAR established a beachhead for the concept and the follow on content companies, if run well, will make non-conservative talk radio the wave of the future so that our country can re-establish itself as a shining light for democracy and human rights. But, the inside story of the major shareholders of AAR is the worst example of predatory greed and vanity. It was surprising to me as one who originally believed that rich liberals would somehow be different.

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In August of 2006, I was told that the major backers of AAR were no longer going to continue funding the company. Our company, Nova M Radio, was operating 2 radio stations in Phoenix and Little Rock. We had done very well with the AAR content so we had a vested interest in saving the network. We literally had to force our way into a board meeting by threatening legal action against the board if they would not allow us to make them an offer. The board had decided to go bankrupt in August and we had gotten in the way of their plan. The board allowed us to visit AAR in New York to do an audit and make them an offer in 24 hours or they were going to file for bankruptcy the next day, September 1 of 2006.

Anita and I are CPAs and are used to doing things quickly and within 24 hours we offered AAR a $2.5M plan to fund and save the network. We actually found that if you eliminated the $15M debt owed to the board members, AAR was in fact solvent and easy to save. Beside that, the branding of AAR was good and well recognized with close to 100 affiliates. We conceded to every issue that the board raised and even gave them and the other 66 investors a significant interest in our new company that would run AAR. The board did not take yes for an answer and decided to reject our offer on some technical pretense. So they moved on to their original plan to take over the company and eliminate the other 60+ investors including the Drobnys $3M investment. The other 60+ minority investors had put up about $10M in amounts ranging from $50K to $1M. But, the 3 people now responsible for running AAR post bankruptcy have a deal in the works and the old investors have been successfully eliminated despite their belief in the project.

This guy's book is going to kick butt... once AAR has written the last chapter.