![]() ![]() I happen to have great entertainment skills … that enables me to sell airtime.” Limbaugh’s agnostic treatment of the Trump phenomenon-neither condemning the New York mogul, as Levin and Beck have done, nor fully throwing in with him, as Michael Savage has-is evidence of, if nothing else, Limbaugh’s canny business sense. “My first goal is to attract the largest possible audience so I can charge confiscatory ad rates. “First and foremost, I’m a businessman,” he told the biographer Zev Chafets in 2008. At a fundamental level, Harrison says, “radio is a business.” And Limbaugh, at the end of the day, is selling a product.Įl Rushbo sees it that way himself. Because as he is learning, political power does not necessarily a stellar business make.Īs Michael Harrison, publisher of Talkers, the leading trade publication covering the radio industry, sees it, people (and particularly the media) tend to look at Limbaugh’s show through the wrong end of the telescope.įorget political influence or power: Limbaugh is no politician. What will happen to “America’s Anchorman,” as Limbaugh quasi-ironically refers to himself, once the contract is up, is anybody’s guess. Limbaugh’s extremely lucrative eight-year contract-estimated to be worth roughly $38 million a year-is up this summer. (Limbaugh ignored multiple interview requests.) He suffers from what talk radio consultant Holland Cooke calls a “scarlet letter among national brand advertisers.” And for someone who has said that “confiscatory ad rates” are a key pillar of his business, that spells trouble. Why? Because four years after Limbaugh called Georgetown law student Sandra Fluke a “slut” on air, spurring a major boycott movement, reams of advertisers still won’t touch him. In recent years, Limbaugh has been dropped by several of his long-time affiliates, including some very powerful ones: He’s gone from WABC in New York, WRKO in Boston and KFI in Los Angeles, for example, and has in many cases been moved onto smaller stations with much weaker signals that cover smaller areas.įour years after Limbaugh called Georgetown law student Sandra Fluke a “slut” on air, spurring a major boycott movement, reams of advertisers still won’t touch him. Because even as his influence is sky high and his dominance at the top of talk radio remains unchallenged, as a business proposition, Limbaugh’s show is on shaky ground. (It’s not that he endorsed Trump during the primaries he just didn’t go to war with him, as fellow radio right-wingers Mark Levin and Glenn Beck did.)Īnd yet, there are signs that all is not well in the Limbaugh radio empire. ![]() Limbaugh has also been credited with-or blamed for-the most startling political event of the season: Donald Trump’s rise. Mainstream media outlets from the New York Times to POLITICO have taken to frequently reporting its host’s utterances as news. The Rush Limbaugh Show is easily the most-listened to talk radio program in the country. This has been particularly true for Limbaugh, who boasts some 600 affiliates on his self-styled “Excellence in Broadcasting Network,” and an estimated 13 million listeners per week. And conservative radio gabbers are driving the political conversation in a way that they didn’t when allegedly mushy moderates like John McCain and Mitt Romney were the standard-bearers of the country’s conservative party. Ratings are finally ticking up, after a moribund four years. ![]() Whether “what the hell is happening out there”-in particular, the remarkable political rise of Donald Trump-has been good or bad for the Republican Party, or the country at large, there’s no denying one thing: It’s been great for talk radio. “ latest research data,” he intoned, “the audience is expanding at near geometric proportions, as people seek guidance, answers, explanations, information, and an answer to the basic question, ‘What the hell is happening out there?’" Ethan Epstein is an associate editor at The Weekly Standard.Įarlier this year, as that unmistakable bass line of the Pretenders’ My City Was Gone faded into the background, Rush Limbaugh opened his daily three-hour broadcast with characteristic bombast. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |