4um: Rush Limbaugh Scandal Proves Contagious for Talk-Radio Advertisers

Rush Limbaugh made the right-wing talk-radio industry, and he just might break it.

Because now the fallout from the “slut” slurs against Sandra Fluke is extending to the entire political shock-jock genre.

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).”

This is big. According to the radio-industry website Radio-Info.com, which first posted excerpts of the Premiere memo, among the 98 companies that have decided to no longer sponsor these programs are “carmakers (Ford, GM, Toyota), insurance companies (Allstate, Geico, Prudential, State Farm), and restaurants (McDonald’s, Subway).” Together, these talk-radio advertising staples represent millions of dollars in revenue.

Valerie Geller, an industry insider and author of Beyond Powerful Radio, confirmed the trend. “I have talked with several reps who report that they're having conversations with their clients, who are asking not to be associated with specifically polarizing controversial hosts, particularly if those hosts are ‘mean-spirited.’ While most products and services offered on these shows have strong competitors, and enjoy purchasing the exposure that many of these shows and hosts can offer, they do not wish to be ‘tarred’ with the brush of anger, or endure customer anger, or, worse, product boycotts.”

There are already tangible signs that the three dozen national and local advertisers that have pulled their ads from The Rush Limbaugh Show are having a financial impact.

For example, the ads that ran on Limbaugh’s WABC show in New York on Thursday consisted primarily of public-service announcements. Among the few actual advertisements were spots from the Mitt Romney–associated super PAC Restore Our Future (featuring negative attacks on Newt), Lear Capital, and the conservative Hillsdale College. Media Matters has been monitoring national trends along the same lines. When PSAs for nonprofit organizations like Big Brothers/Big Sisters and the United Negro College Fund run in place of actual advertisements on radio, it means the show starts losing money for the local station. And make no mistake, money is the only barometer of success the industry ultimately cares about.

Women ages 24–55 are the prize advertising demographic, and you have a perfect storm emerging after Limbaugh’s Sandra Fluke comments.

Limbaugh helped prove that right-wing talk radio could be big business—promoting the idea that only conscious conservative bias could balance the unconscious liberal bias of what was termed the “mainstream media.” In the fragmented media environment that emerged after the heyday of the “big three” national TV networks, narrow but intense niche audiences provided the most reliable listeners and viewers and the highest comparative ratings. Limbaugh’s outsize talent helped spawn scores of imitators—but none as successful, and some strikingly unsuccessful. Attempts to create left-wing talk-radio corollaries proved no less offensive but far less popular, like the little-lamented Air America.

But this latest controversy comes at a particularly difficult time for right-wing talk radio. They are playing to a (sometimes literally) dying demographic. Rush & Co. rate best among old, white males. They have been steadily losing women and young listeners, who are alienated by the angry, negative, obsessive approach to political conservations. Add to that the fact that women ages 24–55 are the prize advertising demographic, and you have a perfect storm emerging after Limbaugh’s Sandra Fluke comments.

As pressure grows for advertisers and radio stations to drop Rush & Co., there will be much talk about the dangers of censorship, with allies talking about a left-wing “jihad” against Rush (language his brother David Limbaugh has already used).

But the irony is that the same market forces that right-wing talk-radio hosts champion are helping to seal their fate. Advertisers are abandoning the shows because they no longer want to be associated with the hyperpartisan—and occasionally hateful—rhetoric. They are finally drawing a line because consumers are starting to take a stand.

An additional irony: just as the technology-driven fragmentation of the landscape allowed partisan media to proliferate, a new technological development is providing the tools to take it down. Social media is making it possible to create a grassroots movement very quickly, voicing grievances very quickly and getting heard at the top of corporate headquarters.

“In the past, a letter, petition, or phone campaign took a few days to put together and longer to execute,” says Valerie Geller. “But now customers [listeners] can instantly rally using Facebook, Twitter, and instant messaging to make their displeasure with a client, product, or service known immediately. These movements can happen fast.”

It is true that these efforts can be “astroturfed”—artificially created by activists with a specific ax to grind—but if they genuinely catch on, it is because they tap into broad sentiment.

Will this bombshell announcement by Premiere—and the decreased revenue from right-wing talk radio—provoke a change in the culture of hyperpartisan talk? It’s certainly possible—after all, they will adjust their approach to follow the money. There is no deeper political principle at stake.

It’s been interesting to see Limbaugh’s allies try to defend him indirectly over the past few days, pointing out (rightly) that the left does not cry foul when liberal political entertainers use derogatory terms about conservative women in politics.

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I'm still analyzing this, but one of the questions I am asking myself is, "Is this a manufactured event?"

Has Talk Radio served its purpose and is it now counterproductive to the social manipulation programs?

Since these large companies/advertisers are all interconnected at the top levels is this a coordinated activity for some covert purpose?

Is it because the PsyOp control messages of Schlock Radio were becoming obvious to a more sophisticated breed of internet user?

Was the Schlock Radio message actually becoming so apparent that it was waking people up to the actual purposes underlying these programs?

If this is actually true, I'd consider it more likely that the Dems are threatening reprisals from Obama's administration.

This is just more public posturing by hypocritical advertisers. NONE of them (Honda, Coca-Cola, Toyota, McDonalds, Walmart) will yank their ads from nigger/spic-hosted radio shows that implore their vibrant audience to quit work for a day and drive out to the Big Protest Du Jour and wave around anti-white signs.

It's just another blow against everything that could be remotely attributed to white culture/unity/nationalism. Pandering to Israel just won't cut it for whitey these days, not while Obummer is changing America into a post-racial socialist paradise.

P.S. Can anybody imagine the outrage and outright mega-chimping that would afflict the left were Sean Hannity to admonish white people to occupy southern border crossings and white folk waved around signs that said "No Mexicans!" or "Messican Scum: Out of My Country!" or "America: Established for Whites Since 1776!"??

P.P.S. Imagine the outright horror that would overtake the left if a thousand white people showed up at the next scene of a nigger-on-white killing and demonstrated with signs that said "Niggers: Leave Our Race Alone!" and "Just Say No To White Genocide!"???

True, but much of what occurs in our media is under the control of those who stay out of the public lens. What they say goes. Whether a story is to be covered and promoted is not decided by the faces one sees on the "Toob", or the name on the byline. They are merely paid actors in someone else's script. What does and does not get covered or pushed is largely in accord with the longer term program - thus one sees homosexuality, abortion, and other perversions pushed in the mass media. Ditto the promotion of war and the avoidance of the failure of the Feral Government to prosecute the massive fraud and theft in the financial sector.

The necon whacko shows were going down the tubes anyway. The rushblo incident is just the excuse the advertisers needed to bail out on all of those loser nut jobs.

True, but that is part of the racial fragmentation PsyOps. Keep us calling each other names and spitting at each other and we are disunited and cannot push a combined front against the real enemy - the Bankster Oiligarchs and their ghoulish minions e.g., the Drug Pushers in White Coats - i.e., the Psychiatrists (who also fashion the control programs for their masters).

Oh, I believe you are correct. What I am wondering about is mainly the timing and the underlying reasoning for doing it now? It is already an open secret that Rush Limbaugh's salary was more than what his show was making in ad revenue before this flap - so he was serving a purpose for his masters. So, why pull the plug now by running all the hurdy gurdy in the mass media - who are controlled by the same people who pull Rush Limbaugh's puppet strings?

First of all, "Right Wing Radio" are necons and certainly not Conservative. More leftist than McGovern back in 72.

And second is the delightful irony of Limbaugh shilling for his corporate Zionist Wall Street masters all these years. And now...

Is it too late for Pills Limbaugh to pull off a Glenn Beck-styled "Rush To Israel!" tour and redeem himself?? Hehehehe.....

Be a dream come true if the bag of shi'ite took some pills and announced that the US is a puppet of Israel.

After this an endorsement by Limbaugh may be tantamount to having the Don kiss your cheeks.

That may well be true, they are TrotskyCons, but the controlled major media portray them as representative of the Conservative viewpoint. It does not matter that it is a lie because they have repeated, and will continue to repeat it, long enough to where the Sheeple believe it to be true. They create their own reality.

And now ... what? Limbazoid now has so much money that he will never go without. If he is being shot out of the saddle there is a reason for it, and IT IS NOT about Sandra the Slut.

You may be right of course. But, it's not unusual for advertisers that target broad demographics to shun controversial programs with their ad bux.

Isn't it possible that the corporations at issue made a simple business decision to avoid programs and personalities that have morphed into desperate, extremist kooks?

The era of the expanding lunch time Rush Rooms is well behind us, is it not? And Rush and Michael Weiner both express their views with a "viciousness formula" that belies their fading popularity and contracting listener bases.

This is a profound marker and I believe that Rush will soon be whistling past the virtual EIB broadcast cemetery. His fall will likely come so quickly that it will be shocking, which is just as well because He couldn't stand to preach to a shrinking audience while Sen. Franken makes jokes about it on CSPAN2.

"If you love wealth more than liberty, the tranquility of servitude better than the animating contest of freedom, depart from us in peace. We ask not your counsel nor your arms. Crouch down and lick the hand that feeds you. May your chains rest lightly upon you and may posterity forget that you were our countrymen.”

Agreed, and advertisers are averse to having their product associated with something unsavory - like Rush Limbaugh. However, I was looking more at how the thing has been pumped up in the Lamestream Media - giving the story more significance than it merits. Rush has said stupid and inflammatory things before, but the question I'm chewing on is why pick this one?

Also agreed. Of course Rush has changed over the years too. When lil' Duhbya was getting ready to be installed as Preznit Rush was summoned to kiss Poppy's Pinky Ring and thereafter his program changed from irreverent, and sometimes humourous, to something more sinister. It was less "Paul Shanklin" and more vitriol.

That seems to be where this is headed. The "Golden Microphone" is about to become the "Golden Suppository".

I'm not a Limbaugh fan so haven't been following this much but it seems way overblown to me. It is a fact that women who want paid for sex are prostitutes. What's so shocking about objecting to the government paying for women to have sex by supplying them with birth control? Maybe the bigger problem is with the advertising moguls controlling program content to their specs. As a cable customer, I can't even choose just the channels I want to watch. I have to pay for huge blocks of junk just to get a channel I do want to watch. Maybe the advertisers should be similarly limited -- only get to pay for air time within a general range of hours to be distributed as the channel execs decide rather than the advertisers selecting particular shows that they want to dictate policies to.

"They're on our left, they're on our right, they're in front of us, they're behind us...they can't get away this time." -- Col. Puller, USMC

Actually that is close to the way it is normally done. Advertisers are looking for specific demographic groups to present their advertising to as those are presumed to be the most likely to purchase their product. Advertising agencies, on behalf of their clients, will purchase "blocks of ads" targeted to a specific age, gender, race, income, etc., .... What they are buying is demographics and generally they could care less what the program is about or who is presenting it (except for celebrity presentations). However, having their product placed in an audience where the buying public may as a consequence associate their product with a negative image is a BIG no-no. The objective is to move product not sponsor Rush Limbaugh. However, when Rush Limbaugh generates severely negative publicity advertisers stay away in droves, and pull their existing ads, because they do not want to be associated with a negative that may hurt sales. Again, the object is to move product.

We have the government controlled by special interest money and our school system catering to special interests for funds and the Media too pandering to special interests for money so that there really isn't a mainstream free press here anymore. We should scrap the whole corporate and special interest controlled contraption and build something better.

"They're on our left, they're on our right, they're in front of us, they're behind us...they can't get away this time." -- Col. Puller, USMC

This civilization, and calling it a civilization is an overstatement, is dwindling down a spiral that will, without intervention, collapse resulting much death and misery. Already the planet has been so debased and polluted by chemical toxins and radiation that if we started today it would still take centuries to do any effective mitigation. The Banksters/Psychiatrists have driven this "civilization" into a corner. It is either reform or death.

That would make a great highway overpass sign. Or perhaps, "America: Israel's Whore"

Rush Limbaugh Scandal Proves Contagious for Talk-Radio Advertisers

Ninety-eight major advertisers—including Ford and Geico—will no longer air spots on Premiere Networks’ ‘offensive’ programs. Insiders say the loss will rock right-wing talk radio.