I've been reading online that some of the liberal blogs are high-fiving over reports that anywhere from 50% to 90% of the spots on Rush Limbaugh today were unpaid PSA's. One blog reports that there was a minute and a half of dead air. One can only assume that they were listening to the online feed and there was a technical glitch. So, radio people.... leave the spin in the refrigerator with the Kool-Aid, be it blue or red and tell me how many PSA's WABC is actually running during Rush's show over the air.
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Rush Spots, the truth please
- Thread starter SonoSational18
- Start date
He said that only local spots were lost that weren't his sponsors.
On WABC stream, I heard that he had 1, count it, 1 spot. That was either net or local, not certain which. He had 5 minutes of dead air for stop sets which weren't covered, and I've read that the American Heart association has requested that their PSA's not run during his show. THAT is the court of public opinion. If this goes on for a few weeks his affiliates will start pulling away depending on what their contract says. If you're going to play with fire, this is the result.
If you're going to report, report on the 770 AM air signal, not the webstream.
R.F. Burns said:
Actually, what's on the stream is not a good barometer. It could and should be but if there really was "dead air" on the stream it's because Cumulus/ABC isn't paying proper attention to it. It's not unusual for commercial blocks on streams to be partially filled, especially news/talks with syndicated programming. To hear a PSA or some additional station promos is not unusual, even on a well monetized stream. The only fair comparison is to look at terrestrial advertising, or at least compare the amount of commericals on the stream, before and after.
We get Rush Limbaugh very well here on 1360 WPPA Pottsville and on WAEB 790 Allentown. If they ever took ratings specifically for Schuylkill County, those two stations plus WEEU Reading would show up in the top three AM category.
As it is, WABC comes in, but that's only for DXers and other misguided purists
Point is, along this fruited plain of coal mines and windmills, I'd say that -- pardon the expression -- 99% of the listeners in these parts are not listening to WABC for his show.
I certainly don't. Still, the louder signals are on the AM radio, not off stream. Fwiw, I've always noticed quite a few of those Ad Council things in the spot breaks -- on both WAEB and WPPA. They are usually very well-timed to fit the spot window, too, as if he were punching them up himself. Lol -- on Monday's must-listen show, one of those Ad Council spots must have sounded like screeching six-inch feminazi fingernails on a blackboard. The spot featured former presidents George W. Bush and Bill Clinton with the same unified appeal for some cause.
I only tune in talk radio occasionally, on some job with a portable. Usually, I'll tune around for my Oldies and cowboy records and maybe some jazz. But via tuning in an EIB station on occasion in the past to hear Rush's swerve on, say, the State of The Union address, election results, etc, I remember hearing many of those Ad Council things.
As it is, WABC comes in, but that's only for DXers and other misguided purists
Point is, along this fruited plain of coal mines and windmills, I'd say that -- pardon the expression -- 99% of the listeners in these parts are not listening to WABC for his show. I certainly don't. Still, the louder signals are on the AM radio, not off stream. Fwiw, I've always noticed quite a few of those Ad Council things in the spot breaks -- on both WAEB and WPPA. They are usually very well-timed to fit the spot window, too, as if he were punching them up himself. Lol -- on Monday's must-listen show, one of those Ad Council spots must have sounded like screeching six-inch feminazi fingernails on a blackboard. The spot featured former presidents George W. Bush and Bill Clinton with the same unified appeal for some cause.
I only tune in talk radio occasionally, on some job with a portable. Usually, I'll tune around for my Oldies and cowboy records and maybe some jazz. But via tuning in an EIB station on occasion in the past to hear Rush's swerve on, say, the State of The Union address, election results, etc, I remember hearing many of those Ad Council things.
I believe that like many stations, Cumulus and WABC farms out the integration of spots into their stream. From what I hear the stations usually have no control over what is running in the breaks on the stream. I think that many of the technical glitches we may hear on the various streams are not really based on problems at the radio stations but rather at the streaming end.
OK How about this? http://www.businessinsider.com/rush-limbaugh-broadcast-5-minutes-of-dead-air-yesterday-2012-3
I listened to a stop set today and he had one spot for a gold compny that's obviously on a per inquiry arrangment. The rest were promos and PSA's and that was OTA on WABC.
As I've told others, if this loss of advertisers goes on for a few weeks he'll start losing stations.
I listened to a stop set today and he had one spot for a gold compny that's obviously on a per inquiry arrangment. The rest were promos and PSA's and that was OTA on WABC.
As I've told others, if this loss of advertisers goes on for a few weeks he'll start losing stations.
Any loss of station will soon realize, he was why there was any listening to the station at all!R.F. Burns said:
Webstreams and computers are oblivious to dead air until it is x number of seconds. That assumes there is anybody in the room of the building in which the feed is piped.
Knee jerk reactions are what we are seeing.
What about Rush, himself? When will he retire? Or will he stick around for the next 20 years and become a Paul Harvey corpse? The inevitability is a world without Rush on the radio. But When?
It won't be now. This will blow over, since he said nothing wrong to begin with.
Jeff in Sa-ra-so-ta!
badjef said:
You obviously don't know the laws of slanderin the United States. The student wasn't talking before congress about government subsidizing her medicine, which is what Limbaugh accused her of. You just can't make things up and spew misinformation about a private citizen. She was talking to congress about a friend of her who needed birth control medicine due to a cyst on one of her ovaries (which she eventually lost) because she couldn't afford her medication. Birth control is prescribed for more than just preventing pregnancy. Rush left that out that part of the story and made the woman who testified out to be a whore. Don't fool yourslef, this is FAR from over.
Once again I ask.... how many PSA's are running during Rush's shift on WABC (terrestrial)?
As for Mr. Burns' comments...... while I think that Rush's comments were insensitive, rude, and ill-advised... yes I think that we should, indeed invoke the laws of this country. Let's start with the First Amendment.
As for Mr. Burns' comments...... while I think that Rush's comments were insensitive, rude, and ill-advised... yes I think that we should, indeed invoke the laws of this country. Let's start with the First Amendment.
SonoSational18 said:
The first amendment does not allow you to impugn the reputation of a private citizen without implication. He lied about a private citizen in a way which could ruin the reputation of an innocent citizen. Do you really believe that the fist amendment gives you that right?
R.F. Burns said:
If only Richard Jewell were alive to answer that question. He was a private citizen who was slandered by almost everyone in the drive-by media. (Courts ruled he was a public figure, even though he didn't make himself public. How convenient.)
Should Joe the Plumber have been off-limits in 2008? He was a private citizen who did nothing more than ask a question to a senator walking by his house.
Sandra Fluke is not a private citizen. She's a professional activist. She's not "just some college student plucked from nowhere." (Why she was speaking at a hearing about the authority of the state over the church is still unanswered.) She's a cause celebre; her reputation has not been "ruined."
And yes, the first amendment allows entertainers to make flippant remarks about people. It's the same first amendment that allows David Letterman to make sick jokes about Willow Palin.
Maybe Rush should have taken Fluke's picture and dropped in a jar of urine, or covered it with elephant dung (both of which have been done to sacred objects, and been defended as "art" with 1st amendment protection).
Some people simply don't like Rush's politics, but that doesn't mean he has fewer rights than everyone else.
NJMark said:
Of course Rush has no fewer rights than everyone else. He says what he says, which is his absolute right. (I haven't heard anyone with brains suggest that Rush's statement about Fluke was unprotected speech.) Those offended (and I'm one of them) can protest and ask advertisers to pull spots via our First Amendment rights. They can do so even if they excuse, for example, Bill Maher's statements about Palin (which I think are also reprehensible and wouldn't try to excuse for a minute; neither left nor right has an excuse for entering the gutter).
Under the law, Fluke is a public figure, 100% clearly. (The Jewell decision wasn't convenient, by the way. It follows a long line of precedent that says the issue of how you got to be a public figure doesn't really matter.)
I was responding to the previous post which questioned whether his speech was protected and which asserted it was not.
And the hypocrisy will not go without notice. Either you're against "offensive" speech, or you're not. You don't get to excuse it only for people you like. (I should note that conservatives aren't forming astroturf movements to go after Maher's job.)
It most certainly was convenient. The media slandering is what made him a public figure. In turn, that protected the media who did the slandering in the first place.
D
Dick Skinner
Guest
NJMark said:
Some people simply defend Limbaugh no matter how repugnant his behavior. They're called "dittoheads" for a reason. They can only rehash the nonsense that he spews even when they know he's just flat wrong. Sure, he has a right to free speech. But that doesn't make him a kind, civil person or an effective voice within his party. This single controversy will impel a lot of women to line up behind Dem candidates at all levels of government...not because they're Dems, but because they're women. So go ahead and double down on Rush's rhetoric...please.
Manny Michaels said:
First off, Rush is an entertainer..not a voice of any party. Who used a poor choice of words and has apologized. As for women lining up for O'Bama over this, I'd look at the bigger picture..the economy, gas & oil prices, and the trillions of dollars of debt we've added since OBama took office. No one is taking away your contraceptives. But determining that you should pay for them, not a "government health care plan" which is now the law of the country..whicf means all of our tax dollars giving you a free ride for recreational activities.
Slander? Gee, how about Kanye West grabbing the microphone on stage and stating, "George Bush hates black people" on National TV following Hurricane Katrina. And you are telling me about what I heard Rush say about the slippery slope of the public cost of health insurance coverage and college girls, as an example? I don't think he should have apologized to her. I questioned if that apology was legitimate to begin with until I heard him at that next show. Maybe he should invite her to the program to clarify HER testimony and statements.R.F. Burns said:
The only reason this became an issue, as I see it, is because a minister from the United Church of Christ was "replaced" with "Ms. Fluke" from the democrats. How do we know that in itself was not a political "bait and switch"?
I believe this to be a a political plant with societal ramifications far beyond that of a possibility of a few misspoken words by a talk show host and possibly by her.
And if you are going to use the separation of a "private" vs. "public" figure as your argument, then I submit to you as soon as she agreed to testify, she became that public figure.
Jeff in Sa-ra-so-ta!
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