Canadian :smack: Dang it, you guys are touchy about that, eh?
No need to worry folks. Rush and Hannity aren’t going anywhere.
And more good news.
I’m not clear on the alienating advertisers thing. Did the advertises shun all Cumulus properties or just Limbaugh? If just Limbaugh I’m not seeing the impact. He’s always has D list hucksters as his main advertisers as far as I can remember. These ads are tightly focused on the specific demographic he delivers and are not likely to leave him.
Among those who specifically stopped running their ads on Limbaugh’s show last year, in the wake of the Sandra Fluke issue, were “D list hucksters” such as:
- Allstate Insurance
- American Heart Association
- Capital One
- Carbonite
- Citrix
- Constant Contact
- Geico
- Girl Scouts
- Goodwill Industries
- JCPenney
- Netflix
- O’Reilly Auto Parts
- Philadelphia Orchestra
- ProFlowers
- Sears
- Sleep Number
- TurboTax
I will note that at least some of these advertisers, including the Girl Scouts and Goodwill, indicated that their ads had been run on Limbaugh’s show inadvertently (either due to ad trafficking mistakes, or general media buys that the advertisers did not realize would include Limbaugh’s show).
(Full list is in this Politico article)
Not in the list, because they already pulled their ads some time prior, is Papa John’s.
That was John McCain’s joke, but maybe he heard it from Limbaugh.
Clear Channel only has one AM station in Chicago and that’s a gospel station. Unless they syndicate to the other, smaller conservative talk station the Windy City will be sans Limbaugh.
On Limbaugh’s soul getting coarser over the years:
I think this is a common syndrome among demagogues. At first, they aren’t necessarily all that evil, just as some above have said that Limbaugh used to be a little mellower.
But the Echo Chamber gets to them by and by. They preach to a hateful audience, and reap the cheers and adulation every time they say something hateful. As time goes by, demagogues become intoxicated by their own Kool-Aid, and then they begin to say ever-more nasty stuff, and begin ever-more to believe it.
This was apparent also in the career of Joe McCarthy, 1950’s anti-Communist demagogue and corrupt senator. This was discussed in his biography (the one by Thomas C. Reeves IIRC). At first, he just pulled a random scrap of paper out of his pocket (which he never showed to anybody), waved it around, and proclaimed that he had a list of commies in government. But the more he did that, and the more accolades he got from his minions, the more seriously he became his own “true believer”. This seems to be a common and predictable pattern.
What Northern Piper said, too.
I recall sympathetic commentary on the guy in the early 1990s from the freaking Village Voice. It was in the arts half of the paper, but still.
Also: Limbaugh has always been uninterested in the underlying facts. If he was an ordinary guy, this wouldn’t be a problem. But as a media personality, Limbaugh will have his dishonesty pointed out to him and some accurate characterizations of his words will dimly register. Morally, he can either double down or level up. The latter will lose his audience and anyway the guy really has little in the way of insight: it’s special pleading all the way down.
Those who sense they are somewhat in the wrong but feel fully justified often trend towards anger. It’s a defensive reaction, part of human psychology.
Ah, my favorite Rush Limbaugh day- Nov 5, 2008.
He was actually speechless at times. He would start to talk, lose his train of thought, rattle some papers, start another sentence, and then just sorta give up.
It was awesome!
So what is the structure of this radio show distribution?
Clear Channel and Premier own the RL and SH shows and sell it to Cumulus, one of the two big networks of radio stations?
Clear Channels is the other owner of the network of radio stations?
So if Cumulus does not renew the contracts for the two shows, the two shows will just roll over to Clear Channel and supposedly be broadcast on other channels in the same markets?
This doesn’t really make sense to me. If the shows are toxic to advertisers, why would the second largest network of radios shows buy it, or buy it at a high price?
I’ve always heard there was some strangeness in the distributions of the shows- that normally a radio station would buy the show(s) to air it, but for some reason, not all stations actually pay for the RL show. I’ve also read somewhat recently that because of the loss of advertising money, that the RL show is actually receiving money (perhaps as much as 2-4 million a year) from The Heritage Foundations (I presume to spread their talking points).With All Of His Advertisers Gone, Rush Limbaugh Becomes A Right Wing Welfare Bum
Well, the first point is only sort of correct. Clear Channel can’t broadcast themselves if they don’t have a station. Chicago doesn’t have a Clear Channel AM station except for a gospel station. So that’s a fairly large market gone (and I hear Chicago area callers regularly enough on RL to know it’s not just “It’s all liberals, no one listens anyway”)
There is another non-Cumulus AM talk station but they’re definitely the smaller of the two and run Dennis Miller in the lunch slot.
Then the joke’s on the loyal listeners?
A perfect example of liberal bias and spin in the reporting.
From the article quoted:
<<America’s two biggest shock jocks just got a shock of their own. In a major blow to their broadcasting dominance, the second-largest radio station owner in the US is said to be dropping both Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity from its airwaves.
According to a report by Politico, Cumulus Media has decided not to renew contracts with the two talk radio titans at the end of 2013, meaning their radio shows will vanish from more than 40 of its stations across the US.>>
Shock jocks? Gimme a break. And Cumulus did not just “decide not to renew contracts”.
<<The decision comes after negotiations between Cumulus and Premiere Networks, the division of Clear Channel that distributes Limbaugh and Hannity’s shows, broke down due to disagreements over the cost of the distribution rights, the source said. Cumulus is known to drive a hard bargain on costs, and Clear Channel is known to seek top dollar for big names.
As industry insiders caution, Cumulus and Clear Channel have come to the brink before during contract negotiations only to resume talks. But the source told POLITICO that Clear Channel was unlikely to reduce the cost for distribution rights to a level that would satisfy Cumulus.>>
So, Cumulus is not willing to pay the price asked and this got spun into a supposed major slap in the fact to Hannity and Limbaugh. You gotta admire bullshit artistry like that. Limbaugh himself pointed out what was happening:
<<“You are gonna be able to get this radio program on as many, if not more, radio stations down the road than it’s on now, and what you’re being treated to is just a public business negotiation,” Limbaugh said on today’s program.>>
I guess he discovered that he was making money when people took him seriously. Perhaps he began taking himself seriously. 
I think anyone who spends **three days **calling someone a “slut” and worse for daring to suggest that insurance companies should cover birth control pills where there is a medical necessity (the same companies who already cover Viagra) could reasonably be considered a “shock jock”. And a few other names as well.
They did in fact decide not to renew contracts. The “just” part is your own addition.
No one suggested that it was about anything but business. And I doubt that, having dropped Limbaugh and Hannity, Cumulus will suddenly start broadcasting “Fresh Air” in its place; indeed, it makes sense that they’d plug in shows of their own like Huckabee and Savage that will appeal to the same demographic. That said, the fact remains that Cumulus were losing money on those shows and their options were to either negotiate down what they were paying for them or put something else in.
As for Limbaugh’s spin, well, he was hardly likely to say anything else. “Everything’s fine! Doesn’t bother me at all! Things keep getting better! Those grapes were sour anyway! Winning!” That’s just the way he (and everyone else in his business) rolls.
So Rush made one of his infrequent forays into the ‘lame-stream media’ and lowered himself into the abyss by allowing himself to be interviewed by his occasional BFF, Greta Van Susteren. He only does stuff like that when he’s on the defensive and trying to reconnect with lost listeners, find new ones or defend himself from something specific- in this case, the potential loss of stations.
He’s made three trips to the conservative temple that is Fox in the past month. He’s only done three television interviews in the last three years, all with Greta, so three in one month is quite a change, especially as he has always said that television and interviews are beneath him.
He gave Greta a whole hour this last time and I think it’s a two part interview- there may be another hour coming up. (http://www.rushlimbaugh.com/daily/2013/07/30/rush_s_interview_with_greta_van_susteren)
He spent a lot of time criticizing the Republican party and republicans in general. He faults them for not embracing the Tea Party (“they’re not kooks!”) , for not running ‘real’ candidates, for not opposing Obama, etc., and said the two politicians he admires are Ted Cruz and Sarah Palin.
So, yeah, I think he’s scared. What other kind of job is he qualified for? None. He’s got two semesters of college, has never held any job other than what he’s doing now and even his own mom said he failed at everything except radio.
Meh, I thought Newt was down for the count too.
Finding a deep red district, running for Congress, winning with 85% of the vote.