Rush vs. Al Franken -- "Squashed Like a Bug"

Air America seems to be doing quite nicely in questionable financial deals, but when it comes to competing in the marketplace of ideas, things are doing so well.

The Phiadelphia Inquirer reports that Air America is mired in the bottom of the ratings in most of its markets -- so low in some that it doesn't even have enough listeners to register a pulse.

Air America's top liberal, Al Franken, in choosing the same time slot as Rush Limbaugh, appears to have made an ill-advised career decision according to the Inquirer article, because Rush, "with 14.75 million listeners on 600 stations, has squashed Franken like a bug". While "Franken's ratings have dropped 50 percent in Boston since spring 2004, and he is down 14 percent in New York, where his listeners now number fewer than 188,000."