SAN FRANCISCO
'03-18'09 9: 40 AM PST
AIG 'Crawl on DRUDGE REPORT Ignites Cable and Talk-Show Radio 'Outrage--
It all began with a "Drudge Report" post late last Sunday; by Monday, it was Topic A on virtually every major news outlet in America, and by Tuesday, it dominated the entire media landscape from the cable shows and network, to local talk-radio, and the water cooler in virtually every workplace.
The "it" is the disclosure that AIG was paying out hundreds of millions of dollars in bonuses to executives of the AIG division where the company's financial crisis originated. The story has drawn universal anger among both Democratic and Republican lawmakers alike and has left the Obama administration scrambling to distance itself from AIG.
The "Drudge Report" had almost 24 million hits alone on Tuesday, and the story was the opening segment on both FNC's "Hannity", MSNBC's "Hardball" and "Countdown with Keith Olbermann". On CNN's "Larry King Live" it was given 3/4th of the program, but CNN opened with a brief report on the Natasha Richardson skiing accident.
Perhaps the biggest media arena the AIG situation received traction was on talk-radio, where the story dominated, and drew heated, almost boiling anger from the Michael Savage Show to Rush Limbaugh and Mark Levin. No other subject matter was brought up, every phone line was lit, and no one wanted to spew forth any outrage other than the AIG quagmire.
Locally, KGO Radio's Ronn Owens opened his program with an outline of the story and proceeded to get an hour's worth of rage from angry callers that called for the 'heads of AIG execs. In the evening, host John Rothmann began his monologue, and for the next three hours, every one of KGO's eleven telephone lines were full.
On the Internet, the AIG story was the chatter of the day on Twitter and Facebook, and virtually every major news site from Huffington Post to Newsmax. All major network news devoted virtually half of their programs to the story.
White House phone lines were lit up, as were congressional press offices from Washington to local offices. "There is 'NO other story right now", said a staffer from AP Radio in DC. How big of an outrage? The AIG disclosures even muted interest in the NCAA's College Basketball tournament, set to begin Thursday, as ESPN.com had a considerably lighter amount of traction, considering the beginning of "March Madness".
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