• Get involved.
    We want your input!
    Apply for Membership and join the conversations about everything related to broadcasting.

    After we receive your registration, a moderator will review it. After your registration is approved, you will be permitted to post.
    If you use a disposable or false email address, your registration will be rejected.

    After your membership is approved, please take a minute to tell us a little bit about yourself.
    https://www.radiodiscussions.com/forums/introduce-yourself.1088/

    Thanks in advance and have fun!
    RadioDiscussions Administrators

Station Owners: Limbaugh Crossed the Boundary

Very good analysis. Any advertiser can make a show of not wanting to be scheduled in Limbaugh's (or any controversial) program. Is any advertiser willing to pull ALL their Premiere advertising until Rush is off the air? Doubtful. Even if advertisers bail on the local level, I doubt any, or very few, will pull all their ads from all formats in a cluster until the station takes Rush off the air.

The audience that he has will stay, the audience that wasn't there still won't be. It will be interesting to see what happens with the Cumulus sticks, especially the big ones, when Huckabee launches. Huckabee's a pleasant guy but he seems to fit more on Salem than WABC or WLS. Savage if he were to be live at noon? Maybe.

I do have to comment the Democrats in setting a trap that the Republicans walked into. And fault the Republicans for walking into the trap.
 
I posted this thought in another thread before I noticed this one about "crossing the boundary."

It seems to me Rush should have instinctively known where "the line" is regarding personal attacks. For years, standup comics have used the technique of saying horrible things about people, often to their face, followed up by, "But I LOVE 'ay -- 'ya know I LOVE 'ya!"

In the case of Sandra Fluke, Rush could have used the same analogy to make his point but done it this way: "What do you call a person who gets paid for having sex? A prostitute! Now, let me be clear, I'm not calling Ms. Fluke a prostitute, BUT ......" and then gone on to make the point. It's a CYA technique that's used all the time. When questioned, just play the sound bite: "I'm not calling Ms. Fluke a prostitute." Has Rush has forgotten how to practice safe broadcasting?

Or is the problem that Rush (and others) crossed another line years ago -- moving from entertainer to activist. As an activist it's much more difficult to soften your words. At that point it does become personal.
 
wadio said:
In the case of Sandra Fluke, Rush could have used the same analogy to make his point but done it this way: "What do you call a person who gets paid for having sex? A prostitute! Now, let me be clear, I'm not calling Ms. Fluke a prostitute, BUT ......" and then gone on to make the point. It's a CYA technique that's used all the time. When questioned, just play the sound bite: "I'm not calling Ms. Fluke a prostitute." Has Rush has forgotten how to practice safe broadcasting?

Or is the problem that Rush (and others) crossed another line years ago -- moving from entertainer to activist. As an activist it's much more difficult to soften your words. At that point it does become personal.
Click to expand...

Rush probably could have followed your recipe and kept the heat level, the protest level down a bit.

Talk Radio people of all sides do need to keep in mind that political talk is not a night of entertainment for a bunch of drunks. The rules of night clubs and comedy theatres do not apply here. People who are serious about their political beliefs do not see this as mock training at boot camp for future warriors.... to them, THIS IS THE WAR.... THIS IS LIVE AMMUNITION. How do you take a real live bullet and with your lipstick write a little note on the side of it saying: "This isn't a real bullet. Please ignore it. I'm just having fun." To extend the crime scene metaphor: The surgeon who removes the bullet in the surgery suite may not be amused by the note either.

Don't get some us wrong on this issue. I am a conversation-junkie. I record all the Sunday morning interview shows and view them that night. I don't want watered-down milk-toast talk. But I want talk where people on both sides of the table have some respect for each other... and some respect for those of us in the audience. I'm a farm boy. I can tell from the smell of my boots what I have been wading through when the broadcast is over. Sometimes it smells like fresh Spring clover in bloom. And sometimes it just smells like... like... well, like Talk Radio of the 21st Century. "And it ain't purty!"
 
raccoonradio said:
I'm sure there were lots of affiliate and sponsor defections when Ed Schultz used the same word
to describe Laura Ingraham. (Mr Ed only has one tenth of El Rushbo's listeners though)
Click to expand...
I've been preparing similar thoughts on both Ed and his former cry-baby colleague, Keith Oberman. The hostile ravings of those two hate merchants have been drawing free passes for years, thanks to their head-count starved ratings. Comparatively few listeners even hear their lunacy, so what you have is that ages old philosophical question about the proverbial tree nobody is around to hear or see falling in the forest. Does it even matter? Nobody's listening (watching) anyway.

The point of my contribution to the Rush-to-flush-Rush dialogue is the bubbling hypocricy now oozing to the surface. Rush stuck his foot in his mouth, for sure. But both KO & Ed do this stuff nearly everyday. I'm beginning to wonder if those two poster chidren for anger management brush their teeth with a solution made from Dr Scholls Foot Powder. Yet they dodge the bullet of consequence almost every time, in part because of the common ideological thread weaving it's way down from the CEOs of both NBC and CURRENT, but, more ludicrously, the fact that they have so few viewers and listeners.

Limbaugh's predicament is a nasty one, and he has nobody to blame but himself. Still, like the residual fallout from eating a bad breakfast burrito, this too shall pass.
 
jfrancispastirchak said:
But both KO & Ed do this stuff nearly everyday.
Click to expand...

I have never watched or listened to Ed Schultz but fellow contributors on this board have mentioned only one instance where he insulted a female with something approaching Limbaugh's ferocity - and he did it once only and apologized immediately (and did not blame his misque on the opposition).

I was once a viewer of KO's "Countdown" and although he did occasionally go off on a rant about this or that I never, EVER heard him try to take down a female with language anything like Limbaugh's. And, to the best of my memory, he did not do consecutive rants day after day as did Rushbo. In addition, he did occasionally go over the top and I recall more than once he maned up and gave a heartfelt apology on-air. I also never heard him disparage a sponsor.

Now that you've made the charge that KO does indeed "do this every day" perhaps you can provide some examples.
 
jfrancispastirchak said:
raccoonradio said:
I'm sure there were lots of affiliate and sponsor defections when Ed Schultz used the same word
to describe Laura Ingraham. (Mr Ed only has one tenth of El Rushbo's listeners though)
Click to expand...
I've been preparing similar thoughts on both Ed and his former cry-baby colleague, Keith Oberman. The hostile ravings of those two hate merchants have been drawing free passes for years, thanks to their head-count starved ratings. Comparatively few listeners even hear their lunacy, so what you have is that ages old philosophical question about the proverbial tree nobody is around to hear or see falling in the forest. Does it even matter? Nobody's listening (watching) anyway.

The point of my contribution to the Rush-to-flush-Rush dialogue is the bubbling hypocricy now oozing to the surface. Rush stuck his foot in his mouth, for sure. But both KO & Ed do this stuff nearly everyday. I'm beginning to wonder if those two poster chidren for anger management brush their teeth with a solution made from Dr Scholls Foot Powder. Yet they dodge the bullet of consequence almost every time, in part because of the common ideological thread weaving it's way down from the CEOs of both NBC and CURRENT, but, more ludicrously, the fact that they have so few viewers and listeners.

Limbaugh's predicament is a nasty one, and he has nobody to blame but himself. Still, like the residual fallout from eating a bad breakfast burrito, this too shall pass.
Click to expand...

My years of watching the conversation flow through the sluice of these forums reminds me that we all approach life very differently. We can hear the same person on TV or Radio and come away with completely different evaluations. We go listen to our favorite person and we cut them some slack and come away saying "He/she is so nice when talking compared to those idiots over on the other channel." And the next forum participant sees it exacly in the opposite way.

Many of us can sit in social situations with our friends who walk on the other side of the fence and have civil conversations about all of these issues. And it helps us understand how other people come to their political positions.

But I must observe this little two-part conversation that I quote above is beyond credibility. KO and Big Ed know they are to some extent entertainers. They make no bones about being partisan toward the left side of center. But nothing, nothing, nothing that I have ever heard either of them do has any resemblance of what Rush did for three hours a day, three days in a row. How can we ever maintain our confidence that this system of our we call "self government" will ever work when we have voters who cannot listen to three human beings talk and then evaluate the content of those three people with integrity?

Elections have always contained an element of rowdiness... but it looks like this election year may go down in history as some kind of new genre. I think this would be an interesting debate topic for college level debaters: "Resolved, it is true that as talk radio and television have become more established, the American election process has become less trustworthy."
 
Much as I dislike saying so, the skillful trap the Democrats set for the Republicans, that the GOP so willfully walked into, followed by Rush going off the deep end, guarantees a second term for Obama and probably the House flipping back. The Democrats will get their one party rule that will supposedly bring utopia, with all opposition vanquished. We can't talk about the economy or anything else, all the Democrats have to do is keep playing Limbaugh;s comments over and over, convince independent voters that Mitt or Rick will go door to door and seize their birth control pills, and we are on our way to Euro-Socialism. Add the charge that every conservative is a racist, etc and no one will want to hear about free markets for a very long time. Might as well not even bother having this election.
 
I'm really amazed at just how stupid these advertisers are to pull ads from Limbaugh's show over this comment.
For one thing, the comment is fairly tame compared to others I've heard from Limbaugh and others.
Second, rather than take a wait-and-see attitude, these advertisers quickly bailed out on the top-rated national talk show in the country after a bunch of people who may or may not be users of their products complained in social media circles.

So what these advertisers have managed to do is incur the wrath of the top rated national talk show host, alienate his listeners, and become a target for future attacks from the people who forced them off Limbaugh's show because they've now shown they can be easily pushed around.

Very very stupid.
 
tested said:
I'm really amazed at just how stupid these advertisers are to pull ads from Limbaugh's show over this comment.
Click to expand...

I haven't kept a list of the advertisers who have bailed but IF most of them are companies that females tend to buy (mattresses and flowers come to mind quickly) then it may not have been such a stupid decision. Aside from the females that consider the source and just ignore Limbaugh I can't imagine the others being a bit happy of how he treated Ms. Fluck.

If I were Rush I'd be careful about not pissing off half the world's population (even granted that the majority of his listeners are male). He could have made his point without the sexist and vicious attack.
 
What do you expect from a guy who is on his fourth marriage and has no children? You can bet if He had a daughter the same age as Ms. Fluke, He would have bitten his tongue before saying the things he said. I'm sure most of Limbaugh's female audience would agree with his comments.
 
You're buying in to the theory that advertising on Rush after this controversy blew up was actually bad for business.
There is no way to know that since it had been literally a matter of days before these advertisers bailed out on his show.
Hence my comment that they should have taken a "wait-and-see" attitude. Just because a few thousand people blitz you from facebook and twitter it does not necessarily mean that your sales will fall.

Now that these companies have bought into that, you can bet that other groups with other axes to grind will try to force these companies to do other things using the same means. Meanwhile, these companies will not get their message to a large audience and that same audience will also be told by the host they like (and in some case follow) to not buy from them in the future.

It's just incredibly foolish.
 
Holland Cooke said:
borderblaster said:
What stations have announced that they are dropping the show?
Click to expand...

"Which" stations.

ADVERTISER cancellations was LAST week's headline (though likely to continue); THIS week, AFFILIATE cancellations would accelerate the tailspin.

Watch Cumulus, whose soon-to-debut Huckabee show goes head-2-head and will throw A PILE of do-re-mi to The Bottom Line. And losing Cumulus sticks like WABC, WMAL, WLS, WJR, WBAP, et al would sting.

There's blood in the water.
Click to expand...
Those big Cumulus AM's are probably paying the bulk of Limbaugh's $50 million a year salary...and Rush is employed by a COMPETITOR.
 
Frank Provasek said:
Holland Cooke said:
borderblaster said:
What stations have announced that they are dropping the show?
Click to expand...

"Which" stations.

ADVERTISER cancellations was LAST week's headline (though likely to continue); THIS week, AFFILIATE cancellations would accelerate the tailspin.

Watch Cumulus, whose soon-to-debut Huckabee show goes head-2-head and will throw A PILE of do-re-mi to The Bottom Line. And losing Cumulus sticks like WABC, WMAL, WLS, WJR, WBAP, et al would sting.

There's blood in the water.
Click to expand...
Those big Cumulus AM's are probably paying the bulk of Limbaugh's $50 million a year salary...and Rush is employed by a COMPETITOR.
Click to expand...

Yes, and Cumulus isn't going to be in a big hurry to dump Rush regardless. He's likely the highest-rated thing on each of those stations.
Getting rid of Rush would only created a huge ratings problem for all those stations. Revenue is obviously important, but a lot of that local advertising isn't going to stay away forever. It will come back.
 
tested said:
You're buying in to the theory that advertising on Rush after this controversy blew up was actually bad for business.
There is no way to know that since it had been literally a matter of days before these advertisers bailed out on his show.
Hence my comment that they should have taken a "wait-and-see" attitude. Just because a few thousand people blitz you from facebook and twitter it does not necessarily mean that your sales will fall.
Click to expand...

I'm sure this conversation has been played over and over again at many companies that advertise on Rush's show or have some other connection. What comes to my mind at this point is the old line: "You never get a second chance to make a first impression."

Here is the management group conversation at many companies: PRO: "If we don't pull out of our Rush schedule, we look like co-conspiritors with many of our customers and prospects." CON: "If we pull out took quaickly and it turns out not to be necessary for the long term, we look like enemies of Conservatism to many of our customers and prospects. Let's sit tight. We can pull out later if this doesn't calm down." PRO: "You never get a second chance to make a first impression. If we hang in there and it turns out that we should get out, we have lost our chance to convince people we understand right from wrong."

Just because people bltzed from Facebook and Twitter does not necessarily mean that as they move on with their life they are going to forget how angry they are with Rush, and how angry they are with the advertisers who make it possible for Rush to continue.

No matter which side we are on, no matter what we hope will happen, we are ALL "going to school" with Rush. Whatever he learns, we will learn also. Either way it goes.
 
From the Daily Beast:

Premiere Networks, which distributes Limbaugh as well as a host of other right-wing talkers, sent an email out to its affiliates early Friday listing 98 large corporations that have requested their ads appear only on “programs free of content that you know are deemed to be offensive or controversial (for example, Mark Levin, Rush Limbaugh, Tom Leykis, Michael Savage, Glenn Beck, Sean Hannity).”

Looks like the Rush toxicity is spreading, and stations carrying hate-talk programs can
do so as "loss leaders" just to keep their ratings.
 
Frank Provasek said:
From the Daily Beast:

Premiere Networks, which distributes Limbaugh as well as a host of other right-wing talkers, sent an email out to its affiliates early Friday listing 98 large corporations that have requested their ads appear only on “programs free of content that you know are deemed to be offensive or controversial (for example, Mark Levin, Rush Limbaugh, Tom Leykis, Michael Savage, Glenn Beck, Sean Hannity).”

Looks like the Rush toxicity is spreading, and stations carrying hate-talk programs can
do so as "loss leaders" just to keep their ratings.
Click to expand...

Remember the blacklist of advertisers for Air America?
 
Status
This thread has been closed due to inactivity. You can create a new thread to discuss this topic.


Back
Top Bottom