Is Air America Radio going belly up? The troubled left-leaning network is dismissing yesterday's report by Think Progress that it plans to file for bankruptcy on Friday. But you know things must be bad when even your top star can't get paid.
"I don't know if that's true or not," Al Franken told Radar late Wednesday, when asked about the bankruptcy report. "We do know that there have been cash-flow problems. I haven't been paid in a while. Like, there's no cash flowing to me."
It's not the first time Franken has gone without a salary. Air America ran out of money promptly after it launched in 2004, after disgraced former chairman Evan Cohen inflated the amount of money he had raised to fund the network. The debacle nearly killed the network in its infancy, and led to a legendary incident in which Cohen reportedly sent an executive to Franken's apartment to hand-deliver an envelope purportedly containing all of his back pay. It was empty.