After the passing of conservative talk media icon Rush Limbaugh, I labored with what kind of piece I was going to write on the subject.
I certainly wasn’t going to pen a flowery, sentimental column. Not that I take offense to anyone that did. It’s just that the internet was going to be full of them and all from people who listened to Limbaugh far more than I ever did.
I wanted to do something that was more proactive and looked forward.
I was going to wait a couple of weeks, let the deluge of memorials and tributes to come in, and then I was going to submit a piece that I have been quietly working on for some time:
THE TOP CANDIDATES TO REPLACE RUSH LIMBAUGH.
I had a list of people that I felt, as a former programmer, were great talents and ideal fits to sit in front of the “Golden EIB Network Microphone.”
As I usually do, I made a slew of phone calls to my contacts at iHeart and in different talk radio circles, to gage their opinion on my list of candidates.
I didn’t get more than a few conversations in before I realized that the column I was about to write was fool’s gold.
The reality is…there is no replacement for Rush Limbaugh. There never will be.
Oh, don’t get me wrong. iHeart will eventually have to figure out something to offer the hundreds of EIB affiliates throughout the country from 12-3p ET/9a-12p PT. Maybe it’s Buck Sexton. Maybe Clay Travis makes the pilgrimage from sports to news (which, by the way, I think would be an intriguing choice). Maybe Tucker Carlson can be lured away from all the projects he’s working on for Fox News. Maybe it’s a combination of different people offered to different regions of the country.
No matter who gets to replace him in that timeslot, Rush Limbaugh left a void that can never be filled.
This truth has been staring us in the face for quite some time.
IF IT COULD’VE HAPPENED, IT WOULD HAVE BY NOW
Rush did not die suddenly. His terminal illness had been known for some time. Even before that, iHeart (and EIB affiliates) have been wrangling with the question of, “Is there life after Rush?”
Many thought that Sean Hannity, Glenn Beck and even Ben Shapiro could be the heir apparent. However, none of them could command the high dollar rights fees that Rush affiliates were paying. How high? An EIB affiliate that I am very familiar with negotiated DOWN their yearly rights fee to a little over $100k recently. That was getting a discount.
Not to mention, many conservative voices have all found greener pastures on the digital frontier. Beck has made a fortune building The Blaze. Shapiro turned The Daily Wire into a profitable, growing content platform that has attracted high dollar investors.
Why would they want to replace Rush? They don’t NEED the money or exposure. Plus, as the old saying goes, you never want to follow a legend.
WE’RE IN A DIFFERENT ERA
Ryan Williams, a Republican strategist and press aide to Mitt Romney, summed up the current situation perfectly in a recent article in the New York Times:
“There’s so many different platforms to interact with conservative voices, and there are so many more voices. If you’re pro-Trump, you’ve got Breitbart and Newsmax. If you’re more of a moderate Republican, you’ve got The Bulwark and Charlie Sykes. I follow 25-, 26-year-old conservatives on Instagram who are sharing two-minute videos that young people connect with personally. I don’t think you’ll see it ever again where one person is the king of this realm.”
Exactly.
The media landscape is far more cluttered today and that trend is only going to continue. There are multiple voices for every flavor of Republican out there and all of them are available on demand. Because of that, no one person can take the mantle of “King of All Conservative Media”. In a way, Rush has already been replaced, not by one person, but by many others who were likely influenced by his success.
Williams also makes a great point when talking about young talent and younger consumers. Those who fit into the Millennial or Gen Z classes don’t have the attention span to listen to a 3-hour radio show, regardless of it being live or on-demand. Short from programming delivered on social media channels such as YouTube or Instagram have not only proven to be more popular with people of those generations, but also drives far more engagement.
WHAT CAN AFFILIATES DO?
At some point, “the long goodbye” that is being offered to Rush affiliates will end.
So, if you are one of them, what should you be doing?
You have two choices: hope or be proactive.
You can hope that iHeart will offer you a palatable replacement. You can hope that there is another syndicated show you can time-shift or slide into Rush’s old timeslot.
However, as a colleague of mine once told me, “hope is not a strategy”.
Stations should be taking the money they were paying Rush and re-investing it into building out local programming.
Sure, the popular decision will be to take the tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands of dollars in expense and put it back towards the bottom line. That’s the safe play.
As I’ve argued before, now is a great time to not be safe, but to be bold. Take that money, or even a PORTION of that money, and GO LOCAL.
Find a talent that connects to your audience and build out their brand to better your own.
There are conservative voices out there, its all a matter of finding them and grooming them to be great. Maybe it’s a former political official…like Joe Scarborough. Maybe it’s a talented youngster who volunteers at the local college radio station…like Sean Hannity. Maybe its an ivy league educated writer and author like Ben Shapiro. Maybe it’s a tandem that has good chemistry together.
Talent is out there. It’s on local stations to find it and cultivate it.
There never will be a big, bold voice like Rush that can deliver the way he did for so many years. That era of spoken-word media is over. It’s on individual radio brands to find their own way.