Posted on 03/06/2015 11:00:39 AM PST by Bratch
Talk radio veteran Darryl Parks is a harsh critic of how the format continues to lose touch with most of the radio audience who aren’t white male baby boomers. In a new post this week he takes aim at Rush Limbaugh, describing the leading conservative talk host’s “fall into oblivion.”
Parks notes that Limbaugh’s program is sinking in the ratings in New York and Los Angeles and has been shuttled off to lower ranked stations. Now it’s rumored– as first reported by Robert Feder–that his Chicago affiliate is preparing to dump ol’ Rushbo, too. A spokeswoman for WLS-AM owner Culumus Media has denied that rumor, though Parks says, “three different Cumulus executives have told me on different occasions they wish they could get rid of Limbaugh’s show and they can’t sell it.”
What’s best about Parks’ tough love missives for talk radio are the behind-the-scenes details he drops about how the business really works. It’s common knowledge that the Limbaugh show is produced by Premiere Networks, which is conveniently owned by iHeartMedia, giving it easy access to hundreds of stations. But Parks fills out the story, revealing that along with requiring stations to carry Rush, “the local stations have to pay a ‘rights fee’ in addition to the barter commercial inventory they broadcast from the network. There was no negotiation whether to broadcast the show or what fee was to be paid.” Barter inventory are the commercials included by in the show that stations air without compensation.
As a result, he says this non-negotiable requirement to carry and pay for the program, “forced local stations to lay-off other talk hosts, producers and gut news departments. Talented people left the radio business and the death spiral for talk radio began. It began years ago.”
I knew about the barter obligation, but I didn’t know that even iHeart’s own stations had to tithe, too. But I guess the heavily indebted company has to find some way to keep writing checks to fulfill Limbaugh’s $400 million contract.
It’s important to point out that Parks identifies as a Republican, lamenting how talk radio has missed the boat on reaching younger generations. He says he tried to warn Clear Channel execs of the impending fall, but his advice fell on deaf ears.
Me, I see this as just more evidence as to how the commercial radio business is a victim of its own greed, myopia, and mismanagement, typified most clearly in the way iHeart doubles-down on Limbaugh at the expense of anything that remotely resembles fresh programming. Radio isn’t dying, but their AM talk audience, and hosts, are.
My fear is that any perceived decline in Limbaugh ratings is a symptom of "cause fatigue", due to a lot of consternation over conservatism vs. the exercise of Capitol Hill politics by "Republicans".
Conservative complacency is the cornerstone of Communism.
What is it with radio ‘sidekicks,’ anyway???
Have you heard the number of shows with female sidekicks for the male radio host???
“Bingo. It’s not that Limbaugh has lost his touch, it’s that traditional radio is becoming more and more a thing of the past. It’s not much different than the decline of print media, or the “Big Three” tv networks.”
I don’t know anyone who listens to a radio by choice in any place other than their car nowadays.
Instead of firing news reporters and other radio operatives to help pay the freight to carry Rush’s show why didn’t they fire the sales people first who “couldn’t” sell the show? Wouldn’t that have been more logical?
In my travels over the past 25 years I have listened to Rush on some pretty lame small market outfits that ran Rush’s promos or some Ad Council indoctrination when they should have been running ads. That’s not Limbaugh’s doing it’s the failure of the sales staff to load up the show with ads.
To the hopefuls that would like him to retire from the airwaves, he may be close to that decision or maybe not. If anything, Rush’s retirement could spur a wholesale dumping of all talk radio as there wont be a need to compete in the genre any longer and oldies is SO much cheaper and non-controversial to air.
Rush, despite his pecadillos and having half his brain tied behind his back has quantum amounts of intelligence in his little finger compared to the brightest liberal on the planet.
WE SHOULD CALL THEM REPUBLIQUEERS!!!!
The article is written as if Rush is on live 24 hours a day, taking up every minute of broadcast time and squeezing out all other potentially successful talk hosts. Long on someone’s agenda and short on believability.
I’m in LA as well. They shuffled all the conservative talkers to a backwater station that I have trouble receiving in Long Beach. I miss listening to Rush on 640am, which I could tune in on my fillings while mining for coal two miles underground. Now I mostly listen to him via web.
Here locally, he’s on FM radio.
Radio lives and dies by audience size and demographics. To radio executives, adding a women sidekick seems a logical way to add women to the audience of a male host. It seems to work often enough that the tactic keeps getting tried.
His job is not to help talk radio, but to help his own ratings
I am not sure what is going on with Chicago WLS radio—one of Limbaugh’s major markets, but they have completely changed their local daytime lineup since the passing of Don Wade—a legendary conservatiave broadcaster in Chicago—on radio for probably close to 30 years. They have a conservative in the morning drive but have brought back 80’s has-beens to fill the local afternoon drive-time and mid-morning programming. I can’t stand to listen to them.
A couple of years ago, I mentioned to my mother that Rush was on. “I don’t care for Rush,” she said. She was a listener from 1988. I think she got tired of Rush about five years ago.
I think Rush is sinking for two reasons:
1) He’s not entertaining anymore;
2) Everyone who is really informed knows Rush is a sell-out, because he is one of those “conservatives” lacking the courage to discuss the crudely-forged birth certificate bearing the typefaces of six typewriters, the forged draft registration, etc., etc.
I think that is what’s killing talk radio. When Limbaugh started, the Internet was just starting, now with podcasts and all other kind of content on the Internet, there’s just too much competition out there now. He’s had a good run, but all good things come to an end.
It’s important to point out that Parks identifies as a Republican, lamenting how talk radio has missed the boat on reaching younger generations.
he doesn’t say how to reach the younger generations.
‘Fillings - - two miles underground - - ‘ Funny!
I’m not understanding the change for Rush’s show from KFI.
Or let’s say if I heard it, I’ve forgotten. Rush is on here in Ventura County on KTVA, Ventura. 1590am. But I can’t imagine Simi Valley bringing in the Ventura station.
We have to tip on its side a particular ‘plug-in’ radio in the kitchen, to be able to bring in some stations. And early evening brings static. Year after year.
I’ve yet to learn to hear radio on the web.
Hi Florida - parents retired there from New York, and passed away there - before 2000.
“__________adding a woman sidekick_________.’
Okay then - -
However, when people on radio or TV talk over each other, I cannot understand any of them. So having a sidekick, we can be assured they will talk over each other, making me nuts!
They can understand each other, but we can’t.
I know this from ‘live’ experience - 2 of us talking over each other, yet we can understand what each has said.
We have slipped into rudeness, actually. People simply cannot wait for the other to finish.
There’s a radio show from L.A. that has THREE hosts - a conservative, a liberal, and a woman! My achin’ back.
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