Nick Confessore suggests that the way to keep AAR afloat is to bring mega-money maker Howard Stern on board. As long as they could rebrand themselves as "Howard Stern in the morning, liberal radio all day..." that wouldn't be such a bad thing. But, the problem is that Stern is currently a target of a politically motivated effort to get him off the air (either to placate the Christian Right or to stop his Bush-bashing). That situation presumably wouldn't go away simply because he switches networks. And, in fact, would give the FCC the excuse to shut down a fledgling liberal network.
On the other hand, Stern could probably single-handedly revolutionize the radio business by switching to satellite - away, for the moment at least, from the oversight of the FCC.
