I heard little clips of this guy in the past and got an earful from his fans, so I looked forward to hearing Mike Malloy's debut tonight on Air America (10pm ET).
Well...taking the small technical difficulties and first-night syndrome under consideration, we still sure hope there's more to him than what we heard tonight.
The big problem I had was that he did his show as if he were continuing a work in progress. He geared it almost exclusively to whoever heard him until last March on the dismal I.E. Network. No, like most of you, I never heard any of their programming either. In fact, his opening line was, "Where was I when I was so rudely interrupted last March?" I don't know, Mike. Most of us didn't know. It would've behooved you to tell us who the hell you are.
He then opened with reintroducing his wife to the audience, who I assume was his producer, and read two stories which were covered pretty substantially by Air America all day - the heavily-screened Cheney rallies in Arizona and New Mexico. (Malloy apologized if the subject was talked about on AAR already. It might have helped if he listened to his own network.) He then immediately launched into taking calls.
His first caller took swipes at Kerry and Bush, and he said he was voting for Nader. Malloy, rather tourettes-like, began hollering at the guy, saying he was sick of talking about Nader and if he's said it once, he's said it a million times, he never wants to talk about Nader on the show again.
Huh? Malloy was on for barely six minutes and he's sick of talking about the subject of his first caller? Okay, I'm guessing this was a meme with him 'way back when on the Obscure Network, but it was completely out of context for a first show on a new venue.
All the calls for the rest of the hour were from Mike Malloy fans - again leaving me hungering for a reason why they were fans.
Mike. Buddy. It's one thing if you were previously on a network with y'know, a following? But it's horribly egotistical to assume that every person tuning into you on Air America was hanging onto your every word back then. I wasn't, and I feel like I was left out of a very - VERY exclusive little club tonight.
Oh, and please stop ending every call with "gotta boogie." It's a very dated crutch.
Let's give Mike the benefit of the doubt, though, and give him a shot at starting over tomorrow night. However, if he still makes the show a continuation of the No One's Listening Radio Network program, I'm outta there.
By the way, Randi, Janeane and Sam sounded GREAT together earlier tonight. The crossovers between the two shows oughta be a blast.
