The end of "Air America" in Madison.

I'd say: if they can't make it here, they can't make it anywhere.

Mike Malloy reading long passages from Orwell's "1984" was not mentioned by anyone as something they'll miss should Air America programming be dropped from WXXM/FM 92.1 "The Mic."

The station is set to switch to sports programming on Jan. 1. We asked readers what they will miss about The Mic if the switch is a done deal, and quite a few responded. Some responses were edited for space and clarity:

• Karl Marx observed, accurately, I believe, that in every age the ruling ideas are the ideas of the ruling classes. It follows that any other ideas will be dismissed by, for example, the owners of the broadcast media as "unpopular," whether or not they are shared by two persons or by 200 million.

For all its flaws, a progressive radio format such as the one that WXXM/FM will abandon on New Year's Day demonstrates the powerfully subversive fact that ideas about getting out of Iraq now, creating a single-payer health care system, adopting instant runoff voting, etc., are not at all unpopular. I will miss Madison's part in creating that progressive national sensibility and that the soon-to-be absent voices do it so entertainingly. (Alan Bickley, Madison)....

So... sort of like... it's unpopular because it's popular? Or is it the other way around? Maybe if I read more Marx (and less Orwell) that would make more sense to me.

Moving on:

• With the loss of 92.1, the progressive voice in Madison will again be silenced (well, except for WHA, WERN, WORT, WTDY, the Progressive, Isthmus, the editorial page of The Capital Times and most of the editorial page of the Wisconsin State Journal, but you know what I mean).

I listen because nowhere else can you find such raw, spittle-flecked emotionalism combined with such robust disinterest in facts. (Dale Aldridge, Madison)

Okay. I'm going to stop while I'm amused. More opinion from the locals at the link.