Air America Radio, the high-profile attempt to build a national network devoted exclusively to left-O-center talk, suddenly shut down all its live programming on Thursday. Affiliate stations will be supplied with rerun shows through Monday evening, while the company plans an orderly shutdown.

This is NOT the end of liberal talk radio.

The local stations (such as the CBS-owned KPTK in Seattle) that had carried AAR’s shows have also carried liberal shows from other distributors. These shows, such as those of Ed Schultz and Stephanie Miller, will continue. Several former AAR hosts are also now with other distributors (including Randi Rhodes, Thom Hartmann, and Mike Malloy).

The remaining AAR personalities are now free to sign with these other distributors. They include the Seattle-based Ron Reagan, the last AAR host still carried on KPTK’s pre-midnight weekday schedule.

So what did AAR in? Why did it flail about in fiscal instability for six years?

From the start, its reach was bigger than its grasp.

It wanted to start up from scratch as an all-day, coast-to-coast, unified force in broadcasting. That’s not how antenna-based broadcasting works. You’ve gotta start one station at a time, and build each show in each region. That’s what the conservative talkers did, back in the 1980s and 1990s. That’s what the syndicators of Schultz, Miller, et al. do.