![]() In the end, Limbaugh stayed with Cumulus stations, but the company sent a clear signal to the industry: Limbaugh was no longer an untouchable and general managers weren't clamoring to hire him. ![]() The following year, as the host struggled to hang on to fleeing sponsors, radio industry giant Cumulus Media decided to negotiate its Limbaugh contract in public, making it clear through the press that the company was willing to cut ties with the pricey host in major cities where Cumulus owned talk radio stations. The astonishing monologues sparked an unprecedented advertiser exodus. The first came in the form of Limbaugh's Sandra Fluke implosion, where he castigated and insulted for days the graduate student who testified before Congress about health care and access to contraception, calling her a “slut” and suggesting she post videos of herself having sex on the Internet. “Who would even want someone whose audience is aging and is considered toxic to many advertisers,” asked RadioInsight last month.įor Limbaugh, the troubles were marked by key events from 20. With his comically inflated, $50 million-a-year syndication deal set to expire next year, Limbaugh's future seems uncertain. All of that seems increasingly distant now. It's a precipitous fall from the glory days when the host posted huge ratings numbers, had affiliates clamoring to join his network, and dictated Republican politics. Apparently turned off by the show's hefty price tag, sagging ratings, and disappearing advertisers, Limbaugh continues to be a very hard sell. That's confirmed by the second and third-tier stations he now calls home in those important media markets, and the fact that when his show became available, general managers up and down the dial passed on it. The humbling, red-state tumble is just the latest setback for the conservative talker who has seen his once-golden career suffer a steady series of losses recently.ĭivorced from successful, longtime affiliates in places like New York, Los Angeles, Boston, and Indianapolis, Limbaugh's professional trajectory is heading downward. Which bulletin was worse, though? The news in April that he was being dropped by WIBC in Indianapolis, a booming talk powerhouse that played home to Limbaugh's radio show for more than two decades, or the news this week that the talker's new address on the Indianapolis dial is going to be WNDE, a ratings doormat AM sports station that has so few listeners it trails the commercial-free classical music outlet in town? The bad news just keeps coming for conservative talker Rush Limbaugh.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |