According to Media Matters, Rush Limbaugh had only 7 paying advertisers on his show Thursday, March 8. . The rest of the spots were public service annoucements.
Wow. The way people respond and organize to media provocations on new media seems to make it difficult for advertisers seeking a general audience for their products to endure the response to the kinds of incendiary things being said by Rush and his ilk.
Perhaps, it will mean the end of the line for this kind of program.
Personnally I think it would go some way to restoring sanity to public discourse. Thats right I said putting an end to Hannity would restore sanity....
Now the Internet also serves as an incubator for disinformation and even hate speech. And that kind of thing doesn't need the money that a network radio show has to produce.... So the Lord taketh on one hand, and giveth with the other.. But it does seem that economics will put an end to an entire industry built on nothing more than provocation.


From RadioInfo.com

When it comes to advertisers avoiding controversial shows, it's not just Rush

From today’s TRI Newsletter: Premiere Networks is circulating a list of 98 advertisers who want to avoid “environments likely to stir negative sentiments.” The list includes carmakers (Ford, GM, Toyota), insurance companies (Allstate, Geico, Prudential, State Farm) and restaurants (McDonald’s, Subway). As you’ll see in the note below, those “environments” go beyond the Rush Limbaugh show –

“To all Traffic Managers: The information below applies to your Premiere Radio Networks commercial inventory. More than 350 different advertisers sponsor the programs and services provided to your station on a barter basis. Like advertisers that purchase commercials on your radio station from your sales staff, our sponsors communicate specific rotations, daypart preferences and advertising environments they prefer… They’ve specifically asked that you schedule their commercials in dayparts or programs free of content that you know are deemed to be offensive or controversial (for example, Mark Levin, Rush Limbaugh, Tom Leykis, Michael Savage, Glenn Beck, Sean Hannity). Those are defined as environments likely to stir negative sentiment from a very small percentage of the listening public.”

This thread seems so lonely with no replies...

For what it's worth, this article by a liberal commentator in a left-wing newspaper completely disagrees with Ricky's premise:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree ... gh-boycott

I tend to agree, Sass. For all the wishing that these odious talk 'shock-jock's would simply go away, they won't do. They will sell advertising as long as they get listeners. And there is an audience for their bile.

Agreed. (I don't listen to Rush either...)

Just a side note, for intellectual based conservative arguments try Dennis Prager on KRLA 9AM to 12 Pacific zone. No ranting there.

I read an interesting thing yesterday. Apparently many of those sponsors that publicly denounces El Rushbo and pulled their advertising from his show waited a coupld of days then asked to be put back on.

Rush's answer...Go pound sand.

Also, it seems conservatives of fighting back. A comedian named Louis C.K., who has his own show on one of the cable networks called Louie, got disinvited from hosting some kind of dinner over misogynistic comments he made.

I read an interesting thing yesterday. Apparently many of those sponsors that publicly denounces El Rushbo and pulled their advertising from his show waited a coupld of days then asked to be put back on.

Rush's answer...Go pound sand.

Hmm. Tbh that strikes me as bullshit. Why would you make a big publicity-seeking statement by pulling your ads then immediately go back on it ? Surely that would just totally destroy all the goodwill you'd hoped to generate and make you look completely foolish. It's an easy thing for Limbaugh to claim though because he'll never have to prove it.

Sassenach wrote:Hmm. Tbh that strikes me as bullshit. Why would you make a big publicity-seeking statement by pulling your ads then immediately go back on it ? Surely that would just totally destroy all the goodwill you'd hoped to generate and make you look completely foolish. It's an easy thing for Limbaugh to claim though because he'll never have to prove it.

Well, because the people making the demands don't actually listen to Rush Limbaugh's show so won't really know the companies did that. I mean seriously, most of the people who are screaming at Rush the loudest only know about his Flake comments because the media reported on them.

Of course you are absolutely right that Limbaugh could be exagerating. After all, the guy is basically a freaking blow hard.

arch

Well, because the people making the demands don't actually listen to Rush Limbaugh's show so won't really know the companies did that. I mean seriously, most of the people who are screaming at Rush the loudest only know about his Flake comments because the media reported on them

.

Come on. Think about it for a second and you'll realize this is a silly statement.
Media Matters for one has paid staff who do nothing but listen to these shows. If they note an advertiser who announced a pull out back on air, the activist team would be sicked right on that advertiser.
They also feed the various media outlets with "alerts". Think that an advertiser who announced a pull out would want a John Stewart comedian on their corporate doorstep asking for interviews about how long their moral outrage lasts?
The problem for Clear Channel is that talk radio, of the blow hard variety , is the cheapest programming to put on the air. especially networked. Whats happened here is that Limbaugh may have killed the golden goose .....
CC won't go two quarters losing money, which they probably are at the moment. Glenn Beck was forced off Fox by an advertiser boycot. If the advertisers don't come back .... they'lll start by shortening Limbaughs program and then hope that enough slink back to sustain a shorter air time.

Advertisers may like the audience numbers and cost efficiencies of Limbaugh and others. But they have a myriad of choices for their media budgets. And most don't come with the baggage of a potential boycott, of a definite consumer writing campaign, or with the scathing assessment of their peers that can come from the association that occurs when their advertising shows up in Limbaugh. The only thing worse would be being exposed as a hypocrit by sneaking ads back on the show,....
Limbaugh's audience is, after all, in the single digits in terms of weekly reach of the broad demographic targets. (Very very good for a radio program but still no where near the reach of a successful network television show.) His audience is a very small percentage of their potential customers, all who can reached elsewhere.(Ford would be more effected by the |boycot" of their products and continually shaming by the activists, then they would by pulling their adds from Limbaugh. As the former CEO of J Walter Thomson once said," half of my advertising is wasted. I just don't know which half."In this case, its pretty clear that a dollar in Limbaugh wouldn't be a clean investment and not worth the trouble.
If the boycot is sustained, I'm pretty sure that Talk radio will begin to change by the summer.If not, after election season.

Ricky, I don't know if you read the article I linked to, but it addressed this. In essence he said that talk radio is not dependant on major blue chip advertisers for most of its revenues. Rather, it makes a lot of money out of smaller companies that just want to get name recognation in their local area and to reach as many people as possible in doing it. These kind of companies don't have a corporate image to defend and won't really care what Limbaugh comes out with so long as the audience share holds up. Fox is a little dofferent because it's a TV network, charges much more for advertising slots and so has to rely on the big boys. As such it's more vulnerable to boycotts.

Your commentator is talking about the local ads that the local station sells. They get this airtime as barter for their airing Limbaugh. In essence this is the cost of carriage . From what I read, Clear Channel makes no revenue from this, it is simply their method of getting on air. And its similar to how I persoannly syndicated a show 20 years ago....
CC still have to make revenue from the sale of national spots.
And note; Clear Channel, or rather their radio division, recently cut back on the amount of barter spots they provide for air time on their programming.
They could try and change the business model and sell the show for cash and some spots, but thats not likely to be terribly lucrative. Local radio stations love national syndications that operate 100% barter because they take no risk.

1) Not that I have any love for Rush in particular, but his is not a ranting show. You should try listening to Hannity or Savage.

2) I think that national talk radio may be on it's way out, but for a different reason. You can get national programming on you mp3 player by downloading podcasts. Why listen to commercial filled radio shows when you can download exactly what you want to listen to commercial free, on your schedule rather than the radio station's schedule? I think that local talk is really the direction that talk radio is going to start progressing toward in the next 20 years. That's why I enjoy the Roger Hedgec.ock show here in San Diego. Yeah, he is somewhat of a Republican, but he talks about local issues that I don't learn about from other sources. I can find out everything Rush is going to talk about by looking at Drudge Report for 10 seconds.

Vince, Rush does rant. It's just that newer rivals are far worse in comparison. You are perhaps becoming desnsitized to it by over-exposure.

Apparently, others are worried about major advertisers going back to Rush. It seems most of them have only suspended the ads but have not made a committment to stay away forever.

http://act.credoaction.com/campaign/lim ... =fb_share1

archduke

Apparently, others are worried about major advertisers going back to Rush. It seems most of them have only suspended the ads but have not made a committment to stay away forever

So if the "activists" are vigilant for four or five months, and go after the first advertisers to try and move back... How long will Clear Channel suppport a money losing proposition?
I guess it depends on Rushes contract. If they have to pay his production company anyway...
One thing Rushes opponents can probably count on, at some point Rush will say something incendiary again....

But how long will people outside the activist base (the ones that advertisers are actually worried about losing) going to care much?