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Could Rush Lose Number One?

There is always a replacement. No station which carries Rush will carry dead air. There may not be just ONE replacement (any more than there was one replacement for Howard). Different stations may pick up different shows. Some shows will succeed and some fail. There will be several contenders and it may take a while for a dominant talker to emerge in the noon to three slot. Talk radio syndication is not the same as The Tonight Show. There is no established brand or franchise apart from Rush. He leaves; it ends. Hannity may take over as the host with the largest audience. He is not likely to leave ABC Syndication to go with Premiere Radio in the noon to three slot. He is probably not even likely to give up afternoon drive for middays.
 
Best replacement for Rush would be Matt Drudge. Likeable enough to the old school Conservative Crowd, wild enough for the younger end. I don't think he'd do it, he's been offered FT at KFI multiple times. It's just a shame that his show is relegated to 3-4 hours a week on Sunday night. It has become my favorite show. Plus the politics isn't strictly Conservative Good, Liberal Bad.
 
Would Micheal Savage move into the Rush timeslot? Would Glenn Beck do it if offered? (he's getting some prime time play via Headline News)..People forget the work Rush put into increasing the number of stations on the ''EIB Network''..he was on the road virtually every weekend for the first few years of syndication, going to different markets for the ''Rush to Excellence'' tour..sort of like the Jim Rome Tour Stops for conservatives..WABC also had him doing a local show just before his national show..he was doing about five hours a day, five days a week, of talk radio, as New York wanted a local show before he started his national time slot..
 
Could selling his show on his website be lowering his numbers?
 
Rush

Rush's "act" getting old and stale is correct. I'm sure his profound hearing problems, topped by his drug habit, haven't helped.In fact, the entire divisive talk thing is beginning to wear thin. Not everybody thinks the same- we get it. And, just because you don't agree does not mean you are the enemy, as Rush, Hannity, et. al. would have you believe.
 
But, unlike the rest of those you cite, I still find Rush entertaining. Hannity, et al. never were--and that's what separates them from Rush.Rush on his worst day is still a Top 40 jock doing talk radio--Hannity is a pundit doing talk radio.
 
Hannity could never replace Rush. He is wearing thin. He is much too schrill and badgers anyone who disagrees with him. He's the best Rush wannabe there is, and has learned much from the master, but still not the replacement for the Jedi master, Rush.... Agreed that Rush has lost his fire for the job. He doesnt do near as many bits as he used to.
 
PSTChrisP said:
Best replacement for Rush would be Matt Drudge. Likeable enough to the old school Conservative Crowd, wild enough for the younger end. I don't think he'd do it, he's been offered FT at KFI multiple times. It's just a shame that his show is relegated to 3-4 hours a week on Sunday night. It has become my favorite show. Plus the politics isn't strictly Conservative Good, Liberal Bad.
Click to expand...
Oh please. There is a reason why this guy's show is buried on Sunday night....
 
Okay, here's the situation. Rush Limbaugh tells Premiere Radio he's hanging it up in 30 days. He and Daryn Kagan take off to the South Pacific and disappear from public eye.
Click to expand...
Midday is up for grabs on 500 stations.Premiere Radio gets somebody else to fill the slot. Sales reps for other syndicators start calling on stations to sell other shows. Some PDs look at filling the time locally. Different stations take different actions - even Clear Channel stations, which don't always feel obliged to take what Premiere wants to offer. Whoever Premiere puts in Howard's slot may or may not make it (think David Lee Roth). Probably one of their stronger performing local hosts (they probably already have someone in mind).Bottom line: A net increase in local talk shows. In major and large markets, many - if not most - stations will go local. Among syndicated hosts, the strongest candidate to pick up markets is Neal Boortz.
 
But where are you going to find ''local talkers''? Read ''The Letter'' in the All Access News/Talk section regarding this very subject..The men and women in their 30s and 40s who would be making the segueway to talk radio in middle age are doing other things now..radio not being among them..You might find T-V or Newspaper folks who an audience might relate to locally..but how many of them have the time?
 
With one of our locals, they picked one winner who went on to bigger and better things, then a guy who didn't work out at all, another guy who worked a little better before moving on, a local newspaper columnist and a guy who handled other station duties before giving up on local talk entirely. One forgets that WLW (and I'm sure KGO and others that are mostly local) have had staffs in place for 20 years..that doesn't happen overnight,
 
"In major and large markets, many - if not most - stations will go local. Among syndicated hosts, the strongest candidate to pick up markets is Neal Boortz."

Please... Neal Boortz doesn't play anywhere where fried chicken isn't sold at every 7-11.
 
Chicken at 7-11?

You can get fried chicken at 7-11?
Who'd have thunk it?
I won't eat their hot dogs. I wouldn't even think about eating their chicken!
Actually, I won't even go into 7-11 - even in gas or blood-sugar emergency.

Best convenience stores:
  • Wawa
  • Turkey Hill
  • Sheetz
  • Speedway

7-11 is the pits.

PS: Neal Boortz is heard in places like Connecticut, Minneapolis, Oregon, New York, Indiana and Pennsylvania. Not exactly fried chicken - beer in the gas stations - country.
 
On the West Coast, where Rush airs 9 am to 12 noon, he has local lead ins from morning drive programs on nearly all - if not all - stations. In the East, some stations do have local-live shows in the late morning period but most air syndicated shows - most often, Glenn Beck. If a station does have a strong local show in late mornings before Rush at noon, most likely they would move the current show into Rush's midday slot and bring in a new show in late mornings (as happened recently in Wilmington, DE when Clear Channel bought a station and pulled Rush from the station that was carrying him).

For the record, here are the current syndicated conservative talk options:

TO LEAD INTO RUSH:
  • Glenn Beck (Premiere)
  • Laura Ingraham (TRN)
  • Neal Boortz (Jones Radio 10am-1pm)
  • Mike Gallagher (Salem)
  • G. Gordon Liddy (Radio America 10am-1pm)
  • Brian and the Judge (Fox - replaced Tony Snow)

TO REPLACE RUSH
  • O'Reilly Factor (WW1 - 12pm-2pm only)
  • Dennis Praeger (Salem)
  • Tammy Bruce (TRN)
  • G. Gordon Liddy (Radio America - Re-feed)
  • Mike Gallagher (Salem - Re-feed)
  • Neal Boortz (Jones Radio - Re-feed)
 
You would have to think that Premiere has options in mind for the replacement of Rush Limbaugh. Right now the only obvious replacement in their stable is Glenn Beck. Do they have some waiting in the wings? ABC has already prepared for the inevitable demise of Paul Harvey by signing up Fred Thompson who will be Harvey's likely replacement. I find it hard to believe that Premiere is ready to forego the tens of millions in revenue that they will lose when Rush moves on.
 
"PS: Neal Boortz is heard in places like Connecticut, Minneapolis, Oregon, New York, Indiana and Pennsylvania. Not exactly fried chicken - beer in the gas stations - country."

Yes, but he doesn't get ratings there. He's on some half-a**ed quadricast in CT that he claims is a NYC clearance (far from it), he's on a fourth-rate paytoilet in Portland, OR, I can't even tell you where he's on in Minneapolis (KBYR 1650?... doubt it), isn't on anywhere big in PA (Philly: nothing, Pittsburgh: got dropped twice), and is on a 1-share-wonder in Indy. In an age with a talk station every 80kHz, it's not difficult to get clearances, but getting people to listen is a little tricker.

BTW, Talkers claims he has 3.75mil listeners, with his own claim of 151 stations. Yet folks like Beck, with allegedly lower national cume, are on more, better stations plus have a weekend show. Please explain... prob'bly because Jones and TRN buy a lot more ads in Harrison's rag than Premiere.
 
KJCB said:
"PS: Neal Boortz is heard in places like Connecticut, Minneapolis, Oregon, New York, Indiana and Pennsylvania. Not exactly fried chicken - beer in the gas stations - country."
Click to expand...

I beg to differ! The ONLY reason that Pennsylvania is not considered "chicken and beer in the gas stations" country is because our arcane liquor laws (that were written by Amish people in colonial times), do not allow the sale of beer, except in government-blessed monopoly shops. Other than that, I'd put our rural PA and NY rednecks up against the best the rest of the USA has to offer!
I have seen big crowds turn out for Quinn and Rose Blue Helmet Shoots within a 10 min. drive of Heinz Field. And I know
that Indiana has plenty of this territory too. Bet you could find this audience in all of these states with the possible exception
of Connecticut.

Old gag about Pennsylvania.....it consists of Philadelphia at one end, Pittsburgh at the other, and Alabama in between.
(no slight to the folks in Alabama....we kind of like it that way)
 
General comment about the topic on this thread....I would agree that Rush seems to have lost a step....his energy seems lower, and I generally don't find as much humor in the show as I used to. I guess partly that can be attributed to age, partly to health issues, partly to the rehab/legal struggles over his drug addiction, and partly because it is getting so hard to find any humor in the increasingly shrill and polarized political atmosphere. But he is still far and away the biggest thing in the biz by a mile, and it is amazing to watch all of these buzzards circling here.

Without pointing to anyone specific, it seems that an awful lot of radio people are a) politically very liberal (the reasons for that would make a very interesting topic for another thread), and b)insanely jealous of anybody who has achieved any level of professional success which is higher than their own. I think there is an awful lot of wishful thinking going on in some quarters about his imminent demise. It is one thing for people who disagree with him politically to aspire to putting on a show that is as good or successful. But this obsession with waiting for him to fall off a cliff is a bit ghoulish.

I don't see political talk radio ending any time soon (unless the Congress opts to re-impose some version of the Fairness Doctrine), and I certainly don't see local stations going back to local hosts, when all of their energies are so focused on
cutting every available nickel of operating cost to the bone. (do you really think that the local GM in Wichita, Kansas is going to spring for a local host and producer if Rush decides to retire to golf course tomorrow? Heck no, he is going to re-orient this dish and run whatever other syndicated content is on the bird.)
 
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