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Rush Limbaugh branding fails in Boston

Bill1820 said:
The Rush Radio moniker is now longer being used on Clear Channel's WXKS-AM in Boston. The station is now calling itself Talk 1200 Boston. Limbaugh had been on Entercom's WRKO until last year.
http://www.talk1200.com
Click to expand...

How could anything succeed on this weak stick AM? How many monikers and formats has this station had since Clear Channel took over ten and a half years ago?
Spanish/ethnic
Progressive talk
Spanish/tropical (Rumba)
Conservative talk (Rush)

Right now the station is the number six talker in Boston with half a share point. It is the weakest link in the Clear Channel cluster. It's former simulcast partner continues to Rumba and is doing better. The station was doing better with progressive talk (yet this station is given an example of how progressive talk can't work).

How long before Rush and the whole format get the big Kiss off? Well, maybe not. Clear Channel needs to have Rush, Beck and Hannity cleared in Boston if only for bragging rights and the other talkers are doing better without them. Possibly we are seeing the future and it doesn't include Rush.


They don't have a good signal outside Route 128. They keep changing formats, not promoting them and taking canned programming off the bird and then dropping it if they don't see immediate results (which obviously they never do).
 
This sort of gives progressive talkers their talking point. While they may have been cleared in a market, unless it's on a competitive signal, it doesn't have a chance. Clearly, the top tier syndicated guys can't be sucessful on a less than stellar stick.

This would be a good case study.
 
I think the obvious answer is that this isn't 1992. There are dozens if not hundreds of conservative hosts out there. Branding 24 hours of content on a name that's on the air 15 hours a week (and less when Rush takes one of his many vacations) is just plain bad business.

When Rush was the only major conservative radio voice, this might have worked. Those days are long gone.
 
Don C said:
I think the obvious answer is that this isn't 1992. There are dozens if not hundreds of conservative hosts out there. Branding 24 hours of content on a name that's on the air 15 hours a week (and less when Rush takes one of his many vacations) is just plain bad business.

When Rush was the only major conservative radio voice, this might have worked. Those days are long gone.
Click to expand...

Excuses, excuses. Whatever they "brand" it, the station is not getting numbers. Progressive talk did better on the same station. Local talk does better on the station Rush used to be on. The obvious answer is people are getting tired of the same act and the same talking points Rush has been shoveling nationally since four years before 1992.
 
That's "an answer" but it's far from "obvious" except to people who only see that as the answer to all questions about talk radio.
 
MattParker said:
The obvious answer is people are getting tired of the same act and the same talking points Rush has been shoveling nationally since four years before 1992.
Click to expand...

It's not just Rush. It's Hannity and Levin too. The only thing that's different on conservative talk radio is Beck's crazy conspiracy theories. Ram that extreme, narrow right wing agenda down everyone's throat. We know where they stand, we get it. But it's the same old, same old.
 
The only compelling reason for listening to AM 12 when in Boston is for Coast-to-Coast. Everything else can go pound sand -- the rst of the day, I'd rather be snuggling up against AM 68, AM 85, WBZ and WJIB for when I want music.

As far as I'm concerned, Clear Channel should switch on the AM 12 transmitter at 1 a.m. and shut it down again at 5.
 
CC is sticking with it. New identity, more accent on promoting local show, etc. Coverage of '12 elections. Meanwhile someone has to pay for brokered time prog talk on 1510 (huzzah it FINALLY showed up in ratings...barely) since the other talk stations won't touch it. In liberal Boston, libtalk flops (at least commercial; the taxpayer funded NPR stations do well).
 
raccoonradio said:
CC is sticking with it. New identity, more accent on promoting local show, etc. Coverage of '12 elections. Meanwhile someone has to pay for brokered time prog talk on 1510 (huzzah it FINALLY showed up in ratings...barely) since the other talk stations won't touch it. In liberal Boston, libtalk flops (at least commercial; the taxpayer funded NPR stations do well).
Click to expand...

You're not allowed to point that out here, sir. Weak signal, no sales support, bad mics, bedbugs in the studio, yadda yadda.
 
Now wait a minute: let's get the radio station we're talking about straight. The current WXKS-AM 1200 was until a year ago on 1430 with 5,000 watts non-directional days; such reduced coverage at night that a Boston Globe writer (named Jurkowitz; I didn't make that up) thought it was a daytime-only station. That's the station that over the decade has been Muzak of Your Life; libtalk; Spanish-language programming. Meanwhile, 1200 was the frequency for a 10KW non-directional daytimer in a Boston exurb. It was only after the removal of that outlet to Boston's doorstep (an easy walk from the southern tip of Newton to the City limits of Boston) did CCU install ultra-right-wing-conservative lunacy nonstop. That's the product for almost the past year. Now, Glenn Beck's first hour has been removed and the morning guy moved from 5:00 am until 9:00 to 6:00 am till 10:00 am instead.
 
raccoonradio said:
Le Liberal Show, Liberal Things Considered, Talk of the Moonbats, Stale Air With Terri Gross Me Out (credit: Ingraham), Progressive Edition.
Oh, and they got rid of the black guy who strayed off the reservation (Juan W.)]

2003: NPR Admits Liberal Bias
http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qa3827/is_200311/ai_n9317144/
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Where did NPR 'admit' any intentional liberal bias? That was the wonderfully curmudgeonly L. Brent Bozell collecting bits and pieces he didn't like. :D Lame.
 
see other thread--NPR execs caught bashing conservatives, attempting to get a donation from an
anti-Zionist group (fake). Their bias is showing, again. They should be defunded.
 
To the person that said WXKS doesn't have much power, the facts prove otherwise.

WXKS has a monster 50,000 watt signal. That signal has great penetration in buildings! Additionally, it's got a decent spot on the dial. 1200 aint bad.

The real problem has nothing to do with the reach of the signal, but the reach of rush. People are just plain tired of him and those like him.

All talkers do is complain. They're making a ton of money and instead of offering to help with their gains they just complain they don't have enough. The truth is, if they had any credibility they would run for office and make a diffrence in their communities. Instead, they are just winey old complainers. Nothing makes them happy. Who wants to hear that?
 
josh said:
To the person that said WXKS doesn't have much power, the facts prove otherwise.

WXKS has a monster 50,000 watt signal. That signal has great penetration in buildings! Additionally, it's got a decent spot on the dial. 1200 aint bad.
Click to expand...

You're not in Boston, are you, Josh?

50,000 watts into short towers 2/3 of the way up the dial is simply not the same thing as 50,000 watts into tall towers closer to the bottom of the dial. WXKS comes out of the gate with significantly lower signal strength than WRKO or WEEI or WBZ (or even WEZE on 590)...and that's before we start talking about directional patterns.

Even by day, WXKS doesn't do well outside the 128 beltway that encompasses the core of the Boston market, and after dark its deep nulls to protect WLIB and WOAI and WPHT mean that the 1200 signal doesn't exist at all in places as close in as its former COL of Framingham.

And the problem is...the listeners WXKS really needs to reach with its talk format aren't in the city of Boston, or even within 128. It needs the audience out there in the 495 suburbs, and "50,000 watts" or no, its signal simply isn't at all competitive in places like Westborough where its presumed core audience lives.

That "building penetration"? 1200's main lobe is aimed right into the heart of Roxbury, and that's not where its core audience is to be found.
 
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