All,
This is much ado about nothing. The author of the American Spectator article misses the entire point of the Huckabee rollout.
It’s about one thing and one thing only....Money.
Lew and John Dickey are part of a radio family that goes back to its roots in their father’s operation Midwestern Broadcasting that owned 2 stations in the Toledo Market.
Lew went off to start Stratford Research after college and John joined him. Two other brothers, Michael, David, and their sister were involved in the operation of the Toledo station when their dad and mom retired to Florida.
Dad fell into an opportunity to pick up WCNN in Atlanta for a good price, Lew and John talked a public employees’ retirement system to back them and Cumulus Media was formed.
Since they were buying radio stations as fast as they could get FCC approval, they had (have) a huge amount of debt. So the biggest cost for any radio station is on-air personnel.
That’s why there is such a push to syndication. It’s cheaper to have one personality cover multiple markets. Since Cumulus recently absorbed Citidel which owns WABC (New York)and WJR (Detroit) the easiest way to pay down your debt is to install your own syndicated personality.
If you replace Rush with Huckabee, you not only own the station, you own the syndication. That’s why the push to replace Rush with Huck. He is safe.
The fallacy of the argument is Rush still has a contract with stations in major markets (WABC) and Cumulus will have to honor those contracts thru 2013. They WILL roll-out Huckabee in smaller markets as they can. He is supposed to start on 180 stations. He will be killed by Rush ratings wise and will either have his time slot moved to go against a lesser personality or will be shopped as a conservative commentator that can be tape-delayed and played at a day-part of the stations choosing, ie: overnights and weekends.
Frankly, I don’t see him surviving a year. Huckabee would have a difficult time going against Art Bell / George Noory and Coast to Coast.
From what I hear, his show is going to be modeled after his Fox TV show with a mix of talk, guests, and music.
I’m sure Rush is quaking in his boots.
So you’re saying that they are in so much debt they can’t eat out and have to “eat our own cooking”? lol! I think their eyes are bigger than their stomachs and if they don’t watch out they are going to have to take a huge enema.