Mr. Limbaugh, Your “Talent On Loan From God” Has Been Recalled by The Lender

I wish I could take credit for the title of this post, but it’s from my friend Holland Cooke, one of the top-rated radio consultants in the nation.  He’s a busy man these days, with a client base that includes plenty of stations that carry Rush, and plenty which do not.

Cooke says the Limbaugh story is closer to the beginning than the end, and I’d be a fool to disagree.  But I’ll bet Rush and his handlers do not have an effective emergency communications plan to deal with what’s yet to unfold.

One thing that sets this latest shout/hate radio debacle aside from prior incidents (like Imus’ rant against the Rutgers women’s basketball team) is that social media has truly come of age in 2012, acting not only as a first source for news (where did you find out that Whitney Houston had passed away?), but also as a lightning-fast tool for mobilization of an angry public, which pushed back hard when Rush wouldn’t back down.  Rush and his handlers had no idea how hard and fast they’d get hit.

The other thing the EIB crew is going to get blindsided on is the legal action which is more than likely to come.  Can you not picture a number of high-profile lawyers who are right now lining up to ask Sandra Fluke for permission to sue Limbaugh on her behalf?  If you’ve never been in one of these situations, the first thing that happens in the lawsuit is discovery.  Rush will be subjected to giving a deposition, and he’s proven time and again that he's only good when he's alone in the studio, not face-to-face with a talented interrogator. Remember his failed TV show years ago? His brief affiliation with ESPN?  EPIC fail.

The Southern Command, as he calls his Florida coterie of sycophants/employees, is not going to be prepared to deal with what lawyers call “Request for Production of Documents”.  By the way, the word “request” is a legal pleasantry.  You don’t have a choice but to comply.

I’ve mentioned before that Cumulus, one of the nation’s largest radio group owners, is a few weeks from launching The Mike Huckabee show to compete directly with Rush, and when the show launches, here are some of the Cumulus stations that will be kicking Rush off: WLS-Chicago, WABC-New York, WJR-Detroit, WMAL-Washington DC, and WBAP-Dallas/Ft. Worth, just to name a few of the powerhouse stations that will be ordered by the Cumulus home office to dump Rush and run Huckabee.

Limbaugh’s stunt to spike the ratings has really backfired.  But, with the Republicans talking about women’s reproductive rights and separation of church and state (which the vast majority of Americans consider settled law), they may have already given Rush what he secretly wants most: four more years of President Obama.  Rush and his ilk do much better railing at Democrats.

So…..although he may get what he secretly wants, whether he’ll be around to enjoy it is more and more an open question.

Shout Radio (Take Two)

A few more thoughts about the devolution of shout radio, and the latest publicity (ratings-building) stunt from Rusty Limbo.

If you are not a broadcaster or haven’t worked in the advertising industry, you may not be aware that “suspending” your ads is not the same as “cancelling” your ads, yet the widespread misunderstanding of that important distinction when talking about Limbaugh is the same as the misuse of “innocent” when talking about Ryan Braun.

For those not as cynical as I am, you may not want to believe this, but these “suspensions” have become more and more common (even long before Imus called the Rutgers women’s basketball team “nappy-headed hos”) in the world of shout radio.  If you still haven’t figured out the difference between suspension and cancellation in the advertising world, suspension simply means you’re putting your schedule on hold until the heat dies down.

And it seems clear that’s what Rush’s sponsors are doing.  I have yet to see or read that any of the sponsors who participate on Rush’s show have actually cancelled their ad buy.

Several hundred thousand years ago when I had to help craft sales pitches to sell airtime in Rush’s show, the argument we advanced (in Madison) to the many potential sponsors who said “I don’t like Rush and I don’t stand for the same things he does” went something like this: Rush is the number-one rated radio program in the market in his time slot.  (You must understand that “number-one” can mean a lot of different things – like number-one among males 25-54, number-one AM radio program in the time slot, and so forth.)  We’d simply say to the potential advertiser, you’re not buying Rush, you’re renting his audience, and that’s what advertising is about.  You want your ad heard/seen by as many people as is possible.

Rush’s show is the number-one radio program in America – and in this case, it means more people listen to Rush when he’s on than any other radio program available – and Rush’s calculated attack on the Georgetown co-ed was nothing more than a ploy to boost sagging ratings.  Rush was doing what he’s done since 1988: whatever it takes to keep his show on top of the ratings.

In a few weeks, Cumulus, one of the largest radio group owners in America, is going to roll out the Mike Huckabee show, to compete directly with Rush in the same time slot.  Clear Channel, the largest radio group owner in the known universe, is keenly aware of this; and is also aware that this move by Cumulus is going to affect Rush’s ratings, hence affect how much money they can charge for ads on Rush’s show. And if you’re following the game at all, you know that radio today is leveraged to the hilt and it’s the unsustainable debt that’s killing the industry by forcing it to shed payroll (i.e., shed talent).

Rush’s ratings have been slowly but steadily declining; Cumulus is mounting a viable challenge; Rush is doing what he has always done, creating some huge stir that boosts his ratings back up.  And, that’s exactly what happened yesterday.  His ratings skyrocketed.

And, in a couple weeks when this latest flap with Rush has disappeared from the news cycles, the sponsors who suspended their ad schedules will be right back on the air with Rush.

I am not in any way defending any aspect of what Rush said.  It was disgusting, unfair, extremely objectionable, and downright nasty.

But it did what it was calculated to do: raise ratings.