Ex-Limbaugh sponsor says dropping show during Fluke controversy hurt company (Carbonite)

Washington Examiner ^ | 3 August 2012 | Sean Higgins

[markomalley]

During the height of the Rush Limbaugh/Sandra Fluke controversy in March, software company Carbonite announced it would no longer sponsor the conservative radio host. As CEO David Friend said at the time:

No one with daughters the age of Sandra Fluke, and I have two, could possibly abide the insult and abuse heaped upon this courageous and well-intentioned young lady. Mr. Limbaugh, with his highly personal attacks on Miss Fluke, overstepped any reasonable bounds of decency. Even though Mr. Limbaugh has now issued an apology, we have nonetheless decided to withdraw our advertising from his show. We hope that our action, along with the other advertisers who have already withdrawn their ads, will ultimately contribute to a more civilized public discourse.

Liberals touted the action as proof that Limbaugh was becoming toxic and his show was in danger. So how has dumping Limbaugh worked out for Carbonite? Not so well. Turns out alienating Rush’s fans may have been more damaging than alienating his critics. As the blog Legal Insurrection noted today:

On August 1 Carbonite released its 2d Quarter 2012 results, the first full quarter after dropping Limbaugh in March.  The results shocked Wall Street, as Carbonite did not meet its growth targets, causing multiple analysts to drop the target price.  The stock dropped 15% in a day.

What’s more, in a conference call, Friend linked the decline to the Limbaugh action:

Yeah, I’d say it turned out to be a bigger issue than we had anticipated. Because you know at the time there was a lot of noise, I mean we had a huge spike in web traffic around that time just because of all the interest in the whole subject. And it took close to a month for that to sort of die down. And meanwhile our metrics were, we really couldn’t see what was going because there was so much noise around the website that we had no idea what the ultimate impact was going to be.  It turned out to be a bigger hole in our revenue than we had thought when we initially did this.

Friend added that he was “not regretful of the decision. I think things would have been worse had we not done that.” Legal Insurrection’s William Jacobson calls that “laughable” adding: “It’s too convenient now to say things would have been worse, when Friend completely misjudged the impact of dropping Limbaugh.”

[clintonh8r]

If I were a shareholder I’d be all over the board of directors to terminate this guy.

[mardi59]

This is one time the stupid liberals should have let a crisis go to waste. They never learn.

Create a crisis, run with the crisis, come up with an answer to the phony crisis to make yourself look caring. Sorry, you only have two feet and they have shot themselves in both of them.

[Seaplaner]

Friend added that he was “not regretful of the decision.

Must be a Dem, they always compound errors by lying about them. Such lies are a sporting event with them.

.

[muawiyah]

Fluke’s a “dude” ~ (s)he has a billionaire boyfriend and he’s proving that money can do anything.

[Average Al]

I thought Carbonite was one of the companies begging to come back.

[personalaccts]

Same here

[keat]

Outstanding.

I could have respected the decision the pull out if it had been based on principle. Clearly it wasn’t.

[Kahuna]

With a market cap of only $214 mil Carbonite won’t be around much longer.

[ilgipper]

I dropped every one of the sponsors who cancelled, except Carbonite. I could not find a suitable replacement before my renewal date. I have about 10 months to go before my next one, and plan to dump it by then.

[JSteff]

I will not continue with Carbonite.

The software is a bit buggy and very intrusive running all the time.
Mozy is worlds above it operation. It runs only when you schedule it (after the first back up.

Very small footprint. It saved me twice and re-installs of lost data are VERY fast.

[A_Former_Democrat]

Yeah yet she wanted government $$$ for her contraception.

What a farce. I’m ashamed of this country’s politics...sewer.

[Puckster]

LOL!!!!

[JSteff]

Mozy is VERY good. Small footprint, and runs ONLY when you set it to do so.
It saved me twice. It's re-install of lost data was very fast and accurate when I used it!
Carbonite is buggy and intrusive. Tech support is terrible even if you get to talk to them.

[norwaypinesavage]

"I am in the middle of a subscription period."

So am I, and I will not renew. "Team Viewer" seems to be an acceptable alternative, and it's free. I will have to send a regular email to myself, in order to keep track of my web address, but it hasn't changed in four months, so it won't be much of a problem.

[muawiyah]

it was pretty obvious when (s)he got to that part (s)he had never had the need for birth control pills ~ maybe condoms before the surgery and hormone treatments, but not BC.

(S)he had absolutely no personal idea of what things in that category cost.

[musicman]

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[hattend]

I suspect many are like me--I currently use Carbonite because I am in the middle of a subscription period. When that subscription is over, so is my association with that company.

Dittos!

[Sgt_Schultze]

From further inside, "The analyst asking the question indicates that Friend previously had indicated in private conversations that there would not be a substantial impact."

If the head honcho could make the assertion that dropping his largest radio advertising program wouldn't affect his sales... isn't he admitting that the spending itself was wasteful, as it wasn't intended to generate sales? That doesn't look like a smart admission to be implying.

[the invisib1e hand]

piss on that scam anyway.

[LA Woman3]

My husband had an account with Pro Flowers and hasn’t ordered from them since the Fluke ordeal. Lucky for me as I don’t have to get flowers in a box! LOL!