Rush Limbaugh Spurns Plea By Ex-Advertiser To Be Accepted Back

Yahoo News ^ | 3-10-2012 | Mark Whittington

[blam]

Rush Limbaugh Spurns Plea By Ex-Advertiser To Be Accepted Back

By Mark Whittington
March 10, 2012

The imbroglio over Rush Limbaugh, his unfortunate remarks about a student activist, and his advertisers took a bizarre turn when one advertiser who publicly denounced Limbaugh last week and pulled its ads, begged to be taken back.

The advertiser in question is Sleep Train, a mattress company. According to the Los Angeles Times, Limbaugh has turned down its request to be reinstated as a voiced advertiser, which involved the host himself endorsing the company. The reason was that Sleep Train's action had angered Limbaugh's many millions of listeners so the show could not in good conscience accept the company back.

Meanwhile, a new startup by conservative media personality Michelle Malkin, Twitchy.com, has announced that it is a new advertiser on the Rush Limbaugh program. Twitchy.com is a service that groups messages on Twitter by subject. The buying of ad space on the radio talk show is as much a political statement in support of Limbaugh as it is a play to advertise for more subscribers.

The dust up over Sleep Train, along with the blowback suffered by Carbonite over that company's public denunciation of Limbaugh, demonstrates that the iconic radio talk show host is dealing from a position of strength in the campaign to deprive him of advertisers. One tends to prosper when one advertises on Limbaugh's show. But cross him, and one will suffer.

The one overwhelming fact is that Limbaugh commands many millions of listeners. There is no evidence that any of them have stopped listening because of the kerfuffle with Sandra Fluke. Indeed, one suspects that Limbaugh has gained listeners, curious about what the fuss is all about. As long as the show maintains its listener base,

(snip)

[6SJ7]

I guess this gambit by the Whitehouse Plumbers Group, aka Media Matters, didn’t quite play out the way they wanted. FUBO!

[dangerdoc]

Rush had the right to spend as many hours as he wanted mocking the woman and her politics, but as a gentleman, he crossed the line. He recognized that and went forward with a public apology.

I think from a moral standpoint, he realized he was standing on the same side as the lefties and made a very quick and public move back to where he should be.

The uproar going on now is from people who don’t listen to Rush and the companies making business decisions based on this false outrage deserve what the get.

[MNDude]

These advertisers are really dumb. It takes years to get name recognition and loyalty. Flower shops are a dime a dozen. Did they ever consider a lot of listeners were buying as a way to show their support for pro-Rush companies?

[WinOne4TheGipper]

One tends to prosper when one advertises on Limbaugh's show. But cross him, and one will suffer

This is key. I called the whole kerfuffle "stupid liberal tricks". Some hack researched Rush's sponsors and sent the list out to various left wing websites.
Members of those websites pretended to be customers or potential customers, upset that the companies advertised with Rush. In actuality, these people probably had never heard of the company until they saw the lists.
The companies, eager to please, but a little slow to pick up on stupid liberal tricks, promptly pulled their advertisements, to many hosannas from the very people whose only dealings with the company had been Facebook posts or individual tweets. There were many of us, though, that warned these companies that to back out of Rush's show was to permanently turn 20 million listeners, many of whom had actually used their services (or might have in the future) against them. Now they can't get back in the good graces of the conservatives that they spurned, and liberals don't really give a rat's ass about them. It kind of reminds me of the Dixie Chicks controversy.

[WinOne4TheGipper]

Exactly.

[bboop]

My husband’s conjecture: there is some new Diversity Queen at Sleep (Whatever -— I’ve forgotten the brand already) who did this and who will soon be run out of town when the CEO finds out who it was.

[squarebarb]

Yes. good point.

To hit Carbonite you have to go through a process, which I did, but to hit Proflowers all you have to do is NOT buy, which I won’t.

Read on Wikipedia that Proflowers was sued three times for false advertising -— that their flowers were ‘fresh from the fields’ -— and all three times they lost, but then turned around and kept on with the same false ads.

the fines were minimal so I suppose it was just a cost of doing business-— and lying.

[McBuff]

One can almost understand their confusion. After all, they make mattresses and Fluke is obviously a big user of mattresses.

There goes a good mouthful of coffee!!

[demkicker]

The list of companies that officially announced on Twitter, Facebook or in statements to other media outlets that they would stop advertising on the radio show include:

AccuQuote Life Insurance, Allstate Insurance, American Heart Association, AOL, Aquarium of the Pacific, Bare Escentuals, Bethesda Sedation Dentistry, Bonobos, Capital One, Carbonite, Cascades Dental, Citrix, Consolidated Credit Counseling Services, Constant Contact, Cunningham Security, Freedom Debt Relief, Geico, Girl Scouts, Goodwill Industries, Hadeed Carpet, JCPenney, Legal Zoom, Matrix Direct, Netflix, New York Lottery, Norway Savings Bank, O’Reilly Auto Parts, Philadelphia Orchestra, PolyCom, Portland Ovations, ProFlowers, Quicken Loans, Regal Assets, Reputation Rhino, RSVP Discount Beverage, Sears, Sensa, Service Magic, Sleep Train, Sleep Number, St. Vincent’s Medical Center, Tax Resolution, Thompson Creek Windows, TurboTax and Vitacost.

And I was about to buy Carbonite. I will enjoy letting them know why I won’t.

[sit-rep]

yes, and the egg on their face at this point is so thick i chuckle everytime i see one of their posts...

[sirchtruth]

"Spurns"

These reporters are such prix! Limbaugh has done no such thing. In fact Rush wished ST "Good Luck" in his reply. It was a very cordial response. People who hate "good" even when they don't like something will never truly be happy in their lives because they can not be intellectually honest with themselves about reality!

Losers!

[reagan_fanatic]

Stupid, stupid move on the part of these companies. Spurning an audience that large makes no business sense at all.

[driftless2]

It would be interesting to know how many of Rush’s listeners quit him over the remarks. Anyone, like me, who has been listening to Rush for a long time knows that he occasionally strays and says something he regrets. He apologized for his unfortunate remarks concerning the sl....er female law student Ms. Flaky er... Sandra Fluke. I can’t believe Rush would lose that many students due some stupid b...er... woman who admitted that she’s promiscuous.

[wizwor]

Thanks for the list. Stupid thing for Rush to say, but cowardly response from some of his sponsors. I had a service magic quote out, but will have to inform my bidders that I’ve changed my mind. Proflowers will get no new orders from me. Only other possible retaliation is Netflix. Time to look at Amazon Prime again...

[4everontheRight]

As I said from the beginning of this flap...the advertisers who left Rush were liberal led companies. They knew the power of the ad on Rush's show but they Flucked up when they thought there was real outrage out there at what Rush indicated a slut might be if one were a slut. Now, we have weeded some of the lib advertisers out, some might still remain but we now at least have room for right thinking advertisers. If you are not a right thinking one and you stick with or start with Rush, you will be tagged as one so you better be ready to suffer through the increased business and loyalty of a Rush listener but the wrath if we find out differently!!

This week I have saved myself a little monthly sum by dropping Netflix, emailed ProFlowers and told them to go Flucke themselves and I am shopping this weekend for new insurance to replace Allstate. I work too hard for every dollar to waste it with companies who will only turn my dollar into an Obama donation! Much like the list of actors and well-knowns I won't waste money on supporting their careers (wow that list keeps growing, I added Leonardo and Lovie Smith this week alone!), liberal companies are saving me a bundle!!!

[EQAndyBuzz]

Many years ago, a friend of mine came up with an auto dialer system. It was used for surveys and setting appointments. This was before all the automated stuff ht the market. Million dollar idea and we had almost 2 years on the competition.

In our strategy session he mentioned that he would never sell the system to democrats because they could use it against republicans. The other partners said green is green and unless our plan was to vet every purchase to make sure it wasn’t going to be used for political purposes we should sell it to anyone.

The creator refused. He closed the company, got rid of us all and went out on his own. Needless to say, after spending his life savings to create this, he took on investors who ripped him off and the system never saw the light of day.

When ideology trumps business business loses.

[killermosquito]

I kindof wish Sean, Glen, and Mark and maybe others would flesh their muscles and tell some of these advertisers that if they won’t advertise with Rush they can’t won’t accept them either.

[animal172]

“Drudge headlines
Gloria Gone Wild - Arrest Limbaugh”

Read this on Drudge this morning. My only surprise. What took her so long? She is trailer park trash. Sorry. Shouldn’t insult trailer park trash.

[scbison]

Also, Limbaugh exposed Liberals and made them look like hypocrites, ie Maher and Shultz. Next time, when one of these morons say a disgusting thing about conservative, they are in trouble. Why do you think Maher was on twitter, defending limbaugh and telling liberal to back off.. He knows his days of misogny are over!

[Alberta's Child]

It would be overly generous to say that the companies that bailed on Rush Limbaugh were penny-wise and pound-foolish. At the end of the day, it turns out they weren't even penny-wise.

Dollar-for-dollar, radio advertising is probably the most effective advertising format for reaching prospective customers. Canceling your own ads over some kind of perceived "outrage" only works if the people who are allegedly outraged are actually your customers. With many of these so-called "right-wing radio" shows, the listeners tend to comprise the kind of demographic groups (middle-aged, high-income earners) advertisers covet. What kind of fool would tamper with that?