One thing not mentioned in the article was the change of ownership of WABC from Clear Channel to Cumulus Media. They swapped a lot of major market stations (including WJR in Detroit) and the Dickey’s didn’t want to pay Premiere (Rush’s syndicator and a division of Clear Channel). So as contracts ended they replaced Premiere talent with their own.
Anyone remember the big splash when they announced Mike Huckabee as the alternative to Rush? Didn’t last too long. Same with Savage. They peddled Savage as an alternative to Hannity so they could keep the money in-house and make some advertising money as well.
Clear Channel and Cumulus have both gone through some serious financial issues the past few years since Sirrus/XM got placed in most new cars and their senior notes came due.
Both Clear Channel and Cumulus went hog wild snapping up station after the FCC changed the ownership rules back in 1996. They paid outrageous sums of money for small/medium market stations and the bill came due. As a result...Clear Channel reorganized and the Dickey brothers were ousted from senior management from Cumulus.
Radio is a business. People’s taste change, it’s one of the reasons FM went from Classical radio stations to a more mainstream content.
Rush will lose some stations, may have to take a reduction in pay or retire, but I doubt he’ll be shopping at a Dollar General in Palm Beach anytime soon.
It should be mentioned that most radio stations are poorly run managed even worse and have terrible/marginal employees from top to bottom.Especially at the top.
It's rare to find one that is well run.
Some of the big city stations are better but do dumb stuff all the time.
When the FCC told clear channel to divest themselves of hundreds of stations because they had a monopoly that changed everything as well.
I -heart radio/clear channel is a lot like X-finity/comcast. These are companies whose original names had such a poor, bad, terrible connotation/reputation that they had to literally reinvent themselves.