[UPDATED]
By Brad Friedman on 3/1/2006, 11:13am PT  

Received this note yesterday before heading off to Guest Host "The Young Turks". It's from Fred McChesney, co-host of the excellent "M&M Show", where I've appeared several times, on Air America Phoenix:

Hi Brad,

Today is KXXT's (Air America Phoenix) last day. Phoenix is getting its eighth AM Christian Station, starting tomorrow. Air America is off the air in Phoenix.

Fred

The KXXT website now has a thanks and farewell message from the now-former General Manager, who apparently had tried to save the station. It reads, in part:

You helped take an unrated, unprofitable AM radio station and pushed it to a tie for 3rd place out of 25 AM stations in Phoenix. You took that same AM station and made it profitable in less than a year and even after the sale was announced you stood by Air America Phoenix and we kept on making money even when our future was in doubt and we didn't know when our "plug" was going to be pulled. In fact, the last month we were on the air was the 3rd best month we've had financially!

Air America Phoenix has now disappeared into the ether and Phoenix is left with multiple Christian formats, some in English and others in Spanish, several "brokered' time stations (you know the radio stations selling you vitamins, good bowel movements and financial advice) a bagful of right wing "Conservative Talk stations" featuring Rush, Sean, Laura, Bill Bennett, Savage, Medved and all of their local imitators, three "Sports Talk" stations that live off the largess of their sister stations in the big corporate clusters that dominate the dial in Phoenix. Is anyone enjoying Tony Snow on KTAR…did anyone ask for him?

I welcome commenters here who have any suggestions about what --- if anything --- can be done about it.

UPDATE: The links to the KXXT webpages have now been removed. Unfortunately, I failed to cache them when I visited them. If anyone happened to cache those pages, please let me know, and I'll link to them instead. The message from the now-former GM, Bob Christy, can now be read in full right here. (Hat-tip to Zelph at Desert Rat!)

UPDATE 3/7/06: A campaign has now been mounted to get Air America Phoenix back on the air! They could use your help!

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