Left of the Dial (2005)
HBO

Description

This America Undercover documentary charts the long-anticipated rise, scandalous near-fall, and subsequent salvation of Air America Radio, a liberal radio network geared towards those whose opinions skew a bit more to the "Left of the Dial." Told through verite footage shot at the New York-based station over a nine-month period, the 90-minute film begins with a frenetic pace and never lets up from the network's evolution twelve days before and up to its March, 2004 launch, through a much-publicized scandal involving bounced checks that nearly ended the dream, it concludes with a disappointing 2004 election that spawned new resolve among the talent, staff and management of the station. The film provides revealing profiles of management and on-air talent, ranging from those with little or no past radio experience, to those with national fame (or notoriety). The latter includes noted TV satirist and author Al Franken, whose on-air inaugural words promise, "an end to the right-wing dominance of talk radio, a beginning of a battle for truth, a battle for justice, a battle indeed for America itself." Wishful thinking?

Tags

2000s, Elections, USA, Radio

Collected reviews and ratings

9.2 The Onion A.V. Club | Nathan Rabin

Following closely in the highly caffeinated footsteps of such voyeuristic, zeitgeist-friendly vérité-styled docs as Control Room and Startup.com, Left Of The Dial chronicles the network's rocky birth as it stumbles through one potentially fatal crisis after another, emerging from its travails battered and bruised, but somehow still intact.
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8.3 digitallyobsessed.com | Jon Danziger

Politics aside, it's essentially the story of a startup, and the unexpected setbacks and obstacles that come with the beginning of any new business—then again, if the folks at Air America did in fact put politics aside, they wouldn't have much of a reason for going on the air.
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8.0 Amazon user reviews

Longtime Michael Moore associates Patrick Farrelly and Kate O'Callaghan (The Awful Truth) take a "fair and balanced" fly-on-the-wall look at the major players behind and in front of the mic at Air America, established to "challenge the right wing dominance of talk radio." (Moore, surprisingly, turns out to be one of the venture’s harshest critics.)
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8.0 DVD Talk | Preston Jones

The filmmakers seem to strive for objectivity, but whether they actually achieve it is debatable - the network isn't placed in much context beyond brief soundbites or snatches of newspaper articles, which makes it hard to truly understand what or why Air America is trying to achieve.
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7.8 DVD Verdict | Adam Arseneau

To call it "heavy-handed" would be putting it lightly, as the self-promotion borders on the masturbatory. I mean, it's a radio network. Yes, I am glad that somebody finally got the gumption to make left-wing talk radio to balance out the airwaves…but it's just a radio network. I hardly think the battle for the nation's future will play out on AM radio.
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7.0 Seattle Weekly | Marisa McQuilken

Although Dial focuses on the station's triumph over allegations of fiscal impropriety that come just two weeks after its 2004 launch, don't expect much detailed explanation.
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