After shedding and reshuffling some management personnel, the network has recently signed contracts with its two top talkers, Al Franken and Randi Rhodes.

It has also managed to win the support of industry giant Clear Channel Communications, secure another $19 million in investment, and become the fourth-most-listened-to "station" on the Internet.

And, with President Bush entrenched for a second term, liberal talkers and execs at the network say they'll have plenty of fodder for growth over the next four years, comparing the rise in popularity of top talkers Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity during the eight years of the Clinton regime.

The network is also making some headway in key markets. For instance, Rhodes boasts she is neck-and-neck with Hannity among listeners' time spent with radio hosts in the New York market. Both hosts share the same time slot on competing stations.

And though Phil Boyce, program director of Hannity's flagship WABC station in NYC says Hannity has tons more listeners, Rhodes notes she gained on him despite not having best-selling books and a popular nightly television program.

But the network has a long way to go to counter its more successful conservative competitors.

Michael Harrison, editor of the industry's Talkers magazine, told the Journal that 75 to 80 percent of total talk programming is conservative.

And, the Journal reported, "a June 1 study from Washington, D.C-based Democracy Radio reported that national and local conservative programming totaled over 40,000 hours every week, while progressive, or liberal, programming totaled just over 3,000 hours."

Profitability also continues to elude the network. Its president, John Sinton, told the Journal that Air America is still in the red, though he expects to turn a profit soon.

Adds Harrison, "When they start earning money as opposed to raising money, then we'll know they've made it."

Editor's note: