Posted on 05/28/2015 6:08:43 AM PDT by raccoonradio
After news broke about the Rush Limbaugh Show getting kicked to the curb by WRKO-AM in Boston, Nielsen radio market #10, I received about a dozen emails asking when I was going to comment. So, here goes.
First, understand the “business of business is business” and the “business of money is money.” And it’s money not a station’s Nielsen ratings that will ultimately determine your success or failure as a personality. For most of us, revenue and ratings are connected. But, that’s not true for everyone.
After Rush Limbaugh stepped over the line with his Sandra Fluke comments a few years ago, his mistake being an old man verbally abusing a young woman, which in our society is never acceptable, liberal bloggers and media sites made note of the dozens and dozens of advertisers who canceled advertising in his show. Somewhat true, in an indirect way. But the real story, almost always left out by liberal bloggers, is most of the advertisers who supposedly canceled never advertised in his show. His show has always been filled with non-traditional, non-mainstream advertisers, advertisers who buy into the Rush Limbaugh brand to focus on his niche ditto head audience. And there’s nothing wrong with this because many ditto heads are affluent. Many have the bucks to buy gold coins in event the economy goes to crap because of Obama and besides they want to “take our country back.” No one is really sure who took the country or where it’s gone, but they want it back! I saw the hand-painted bed sheet hanging from a bridge in Northern Kentucky a few weeks ago. I know they’re serious.
Limbaugh’s Sandra Fluke comments were the cause, indirectly, of the Wall Street Journal Radio Network being shuttered. Because of no placement demands from advertisers, commercials from other radio networks could not be broadcast locally during Limbaugh’s show and some of those other radio networks, like the Wall Street Journal Radio Network, lost – in the weeks immediately after his Fluke comments – almost 40% of its revenue. I am told Fox News Radio lost about the same.
Today, talk radio stations are considered “toxic” or “non-toxic.” If a station broadcasts Limbaugh or other shows like Sean Hannity and Glenn Beck they are deemed “toxic.” If a station does not broadcast those conservative talk shows they are considered “non-toxic.” National advertisers buy, via radio networks and agencies, mostly “non-toxic” stations. When I first heard about this “toxic” and “non-toxic” nonsense I thought it was a joke. But, it wasn’t. And since most news/talk stations broadcast Limbaugh, Hannity, Beck and other programs like Michael Savage’s The Savage Nation, there are few “non-toxic” news/talk stations for advertisers to buy and that’s not good for the format.
Following so far?
But, Limbaugh’s business model, in comparison to most other syndicated talk shows, is somewhat unique and this is where those beating the drum about advertisers canceling commercials on liberal blogs are missing the point.
The Rush Limbaugh Show is fee based, meaning stations pay the show’s syndicator, Premiere Networks, a rights fee based on market size, plus provide barter commercial time to broadcast the program. Limbaugh’s show reserves at least 5 minutes of barter commercial time each hour with stations agreeing to broadcast those network commercials sold by the syndicator.
Mr. Limbaugh, sir. I regret to inform you Indianapolis and Boston no longer desire your services. Maybe if we deflate some footballs people will listen?
Boston’s WRKO-AM is paying around $500,000 each year in rights fees. They also provide approximately 3900 barter commercial minutes annually, which if valued at just $150 per :60 seconds is another $585,000 in cash they’re giving up. And there’s the Rush Limbaugh Morning Update, which tacks on another 780 minutes annually for another $117,000 in commercial time. All in Limbaugh’s show is costing WRKO-AM around $1.2 million dollars annually. Now consider all those advertisers, nationally and locally in the Boston market, that have no placement demands because his show is considered “toxic” and you quickly discover the financial reason WRKO-AM is declaring, “No Mas! No Mas!”
There was a time when Limbaugh’s show could make or break a news/talk station. There were short-sighted stations that foolishly called themselves “Rush Radio.” There was a time when paying Limbaugh’s huge rights fee was the cost of doing business in the news/talk format. But, no more. Not with terrestrial AM radio, its declining revenue environment and his declining ratings.
Minneapolis pays around $300,000. Tampa pays approximately $250,000 in rights fees. WIBC-FM, which also announced they were canceling his program is paying around $150,000 in cash to broadcast his show. He’s got around 600 radio stations. Do the math. Much of the business of the Rush Limbaugh Show is not in advertising revenue from commercials, but in rights fees.
WRKO-AM is owned by Entercom and WIBC-FM is owned by Emmis.
Clear Channel Media + Entertainment iHeart Media produces the Rush Limbaugh Show through its radio network, Premiere Networks. It requires most of its company owned news/talk stations to broadcast the show, pay the rights fee and give up barter commercials. See how the show is less dependent on commercials for survival and more dependent on guaranteed rights fees? There’s little chance Rush’s poor ratings today or tomorrow will change anything, because the money flows from its stations to the network to Limbaugh through a process called (corporate speak) “vertical integration.” Production and distribution is in one tidy package and distribution is all but assured.
Two more markets have canceled Rush and while we’re told “exciting news” on new radio homes is forthcoming, nothing is being said and weeks have gone by for an Indianapolis station to volunteer.
I was quoted in the New York Daily News this week. The article from David Hinckley talks about Limbaugh’s $400 million contract being up in 2016. Hinckley opines in his article, “Given Limbaugh’s prominence, his next deal could say a lot about both his status and the state of conservative talk radio.”
While his paycheck may be smaller in the coming years, as long as co-owned stations are forced to pay his rights fee, ditto heads will be happy to know he’ll be around for a while…unless he too yells, “No Mas. No Mas.”
“His Fluke comment was the wrong thing to say at the wrong time”
Baloney. Fluke is a dirty slut asking everyone else to subsidize her condoms.
What he really said was that Hillary Clinton is the devil...next thing you know,Media Matters is taking him down over the knappy headed thing
I live in Meredith and get Rush on WNTK
Fluke, shmuke. I don’t listen to Rush any more because the show content/commercial ratio seems to have dropped to about 1:2.
Read your history on Father Coughlin. FDR set out quite deliberately to silence him. He used FCC rules and postal regulations to pretty much shut him up (though a new Archbishop in Detroit sealed the deal by ordering Fr. Coughlin to be quiet and go back to being a parish Priest). The rule that even an overnight-shift disc jockey had to pass an FCC licensing test before touching a turntable was passed specifically to get Coughlin off the radio.
He may have been a Nazi-sympathizing Socialist rabble-rouser, but his First Amendment rights were trampled on perhaps more brazenly than any other American in our history.
Yep. Lurkers should definitely check out the treatment of Father Coughlin.
‘Toxic’ ... As defined by the left
Almost every utterance by members of the left is psychologically toxic.
Rush has never been the same since the Sandra Fluke affair where he rushed back to the microphone to apologize profusely. He lost me with that.
While I was once a daily listener, I have moved on since his "passion" is gone.
Want another indicator of the flagging nature of his radio show? On FR is a daily thread that follows the "Rush Limbaugh Show." After listening to his show, I would eagerly read this thread. The number of comments would be in the hundreds. Look at that same thread recently. The number of comments about his show's content is well below a hundred (yesterday it was 37!) with many of them being nothing more than FReepers exchanging greetings and recipes.
To me, that Rush thread, on FreeRepublic of all places, says it all.
Yeah, really. No sense listening to the last 15 minutes of every hour...6 min of ads, a live 2 min ad, 1 min of something, 5 min ads, 1 min end of hour stay tuned in for more. Hannity is getting about as ridiculous as well.
The Fluke thing also fit hand-in-glove with the latest Liberal cause celebre, “ban slut shaming”. They are trying to make it socially unacceptable, bordering on criminal, to criticize a woman for her sexual behavior no matter WHAT it is she has chosen to do.
Good observations...I too have noticed the declining activity on the Rush threads.
Me too.Went to his "blog" he looks like a wannbe to me....
True. Fluke was and is a slut wjomwants everyone else to pay for her birth control. And she perdnally could easily afford it anyway.
I think the truth ought to be said, especially if the alternative is to stay silent like a mouse. Nothing he said was wrong. Lobtards spin whatevr is said opposed to them, doesn’t matter how nice one tries to couch it.
Mythmaking by the barrel.
Sandra Fluke was a sex positive agenda activist who took her campaign to a Catholic school to challenge their position on birth control (it was not PROHIBITED in its use on campus, the school did not pay for it).
She may or may not have participated in a "slut walk" on her campus.
She gave false testimony (not before congress, as was the spin) before a press conference arranged by the Democrats pleading that as poor little college student she couldn't afford birth control to keep from getting pregnant.
(A) As Rush Limbaugh pointed out, a year's supply of condoms could be had for far far less than $3,000 unless she was bedding down everyone in the dorm nightly.
(B) She went romping around the world on vay-cay with her boyfriend after the bru-ha-ha dusted up. So much for not being able to afford it.
(C) Rush Limbaugh was the victim of targeted twitter and email scampaign by a couple dozen diehard libs who retweet their own hate/anger.
Sponsors got "skeered" and dropped their support. We were told it was "wrong" for consumers to likewise boycott those businesses.
If all you're doing is calling a phone number, do you actually need a smartphone??That's like is a concept that I've been thinking about a lot lately, which might be called "telephonic broadcasting." The idea being that a "simple" cell phone signal could be picked up by any number of cell phones in any given cell with no marginal cost in terms of radio traffic. The cell is just a very low power, very short range "broadcast," as long as it is a one-way proposition where nobody talks back.
Recalling the furor over Jim McDermott's (sp) publishing of intercepted cell phone traffic between Newt Gingrich an a lieutenant, we know that the FCC bans such interception - but it demonstrates the technical feasibility of implementing vastly more audio channels than the FCC licenses in the AM and FM broadcast bands. That is the "magic" of cell technology - by which your digital cell radio seamlessly selects the local cell tower with which it can communicate best. That is a technology which was not dreamt of when the FCC was instituted.
Make no mistake, the FCC would be entirely uninterested in opening up a huge new set of "broadcast" channels - for the simple bureaucratic reason that that would reduce the importance of the FCC.
Savage is fond of bragging how he took over Hannity's 3 - 5 p.m. slot on WJR here in Detroit a couple years ago.
What he doesn't say is that Hannity signed on to the Patriot network here and is now on the air for 3 hours instead of his original two and being broadcast on both an AM and FM station they own here......LOL!
Doesn’t “iheartradio” offer streaming content (including Rush) to phones?
Is this more another case of “white people have pay-radio, internet, and cellphones and therefore don’t NEED broadcast spectrum stations anymore”?
It’s what I’ve been repeatedly told as old people were kicked out of radio markets (wealthy, retired) and English speakers are...
Little secret, it matters not what Rush says. Media Matters has been known to selectively redact statements and mis-attribute them to cause phony outrage.
And the twitter team that attacks his show overstate their numbers by a thousand fold.
Wasn’t there a famous line....the news of my demise....
RUSH is HUGE, this writer is a gnat bothered by free speech.
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