WOR's transmitter is much weaker than WABC's. (WABC's transmitter range is legendary.)
Posted on 06/19/2015 5:29:39 AM PDT by SeekAndFind
Rush Limbaugh's woes in the ratings game of partisan talk radio are being highlighted by his left-wing enemies, Media Matters is gleefully reporting that the radio talk show host is on a downward slide.
Salon puts this headline on the piece, "Rush Limbaugh’s downward spiral continues: Another demotion, another step toward irrelevancy."
The piece highlights a recent move down the radio dial Limbaugh was forced to make after being dumped by his host station in Boston, Mass.
Limbaugh is still on the air in Boston but the conservative radio talk show has a new AM home in the city and it "currently boasts a 0.6 rating, trails four non-commercial stations in the market, and becomes yet another big-city, cellar-dwelling outpost that Limbaugh is forced to call home," Salon reports.
The have a lot more Rush bashing here.
Earlier, the New York Daily News revealed that sagging ratings might mean less money for Limbaugh in his next contract noting that "the ratings for syndicated conservative talk have flattened or dropped for several years, despite the gift of a Democratic President to hammer, and some think the format is wearing down."
Daryl Parks, a former talk host, media blogger and self-described Republican is quoted by NYDN and has the opinion that the schtick is wearing thin,
“Today’s talk radio is fast fading into the sunset because of a format stuck with 1990s rhetoric,” he says.
“A constant right-wing political drumbeat no longer resonates.”
The article notes that Rush "lost many advertisers after the Sandra Fluke birth control controversy in 2012, and that could affect what his syndicator, Premiere, will offer when his eight-year, $50 million a year deal expires in 2016."
Despite the ratings woes and aging demographics for the show he is still the "face of syndicated conservative talk radio," according to the NYDN.
I agree. When he starts in on football or other sports, promoting his books or tea or begins repeating himself during long monologues, I change the station. Also, he used to be optimistic talking about how we are winning but he seems to have lost that.
I agree, I am in and out of the car all day on short trips. It seems I am always hitting either the top of the hour of the bottom. The same commercials over and over and on the rare occasion I hear him talk he is likely talking about his books or ice tea.
I agree with a poster who says he touts tea and kids’ books. Too much self-promotion; too many commercials; too much stuff on football. I find that I turn it off after about an hour. What he says the first hour is basically the best for the day.
Let me also make another observation: His voice has gotten hard to listen to. He is straining a lot and sounds very annoying. Perhaps has something to do with his hearing loss, but he needs to ease up with the forced rants. Very hard to listen to after about an hour.
All I give him any day is 20 minutes after he starts. We are in an ideological war with liberalism and the forces that want to destroy our sovereignty, and if he doesn’t sound prepared to do battle with conviction, I shut him off and go elsewhere. You’re right. He’s rich, comfortable, great looking new wife, planes, houses and all the getaways he can handle, and I just don’t think he can get by anymore with that pretend arrogant new-kid-on-the-block blustering bravado anymore. He’s way too old and too rich for that stuff now.
WOR's transmitter is much weaker than WABC's. (WABC's transmitter range is legendary.)
“You give him one little break and he’ll be off talking about football or golf and a heartbeat”.
Michael Savage is a lot worse than Rush for talking trivial nothing. He’ll go on and on and on about vitamins and how to grow a garden, or his personal stories from the Bronx. I quit listening to Savage a long time ago for that very reason.
Exactly
The way things are they wanted to at least get his show on air somehow so the ads could be run. WRKO found the ratings it got wouldn’t justify renewing—$500k/yr plus another $700k in lost “barter” ad spots. WMEX is being leased by some folks from NC who couldn’t afford him. WBZ runs talk at night—local—but news by day. So iHeart had to convert a Spanish language station to talk so Rush, Sean and Glenn could be heard. They tried it before with WXKS 1200 in 2010 including local hosts but had a tough time making money and now they lease 1200 to Bloomberg who runs financial talk.
In 2008 iHeart, then known as Clear Channel paid Rush $38 million per yr for 8 years and a signing bonus made it effectively $50M per year. They did it because Rush made them a lot of money. He still does and still has well over 500 affiliates I think.In many cities stations can afford him (it goes by market size) but it was tough to do in Boston. Yeah a liberal town—the NPR stations do well—but what does it say about progressive talk that a)stations wouldn’t run it on their own fearing low ratings and b) someone had to buy time to put it on. In Boston!!
Air America was a miserable flop; they tried to do their own “Rush” with Al Franken. In 04 Air America predicted they, like Rush, would have about 500 stations too in about 5 years. They even got Clear Channel to run it in places like Boston (1200, 1430) and Prov. (920). Soon it went away—the prog. dir of 920 in RI said “the Air America experiment is over” and flipped to conservative talk.
Many people listen online these days anyway, at work.
I sure hope he has someone monitoring here. He definitely needs to step up his game, for sure.
There are a whole cluster of these stories out in the last couple of days.
It’s almost like they were coordinated.
Picking target. Freezing it. Personalizing it. Polarizing it.
Why?
Well, I listen most every day, and have been doing so since 1989 or so. As a matter of fact, the local affiliate, KTBB, just launched a powerful FM station, which means I can listen up to about 80 miles away now.
Yes the Lifelock ads drive me away, too. All the talk shows waste valuable airtime that way now.
Rush makes a big deal about only talking about what interests him but too often it doesn’t interest me. Apple, tea, books, ios or some frivolous topic like Jenner. Plus, he rambles and repeats himself so much. Or he gets obsessed about playing audio of radio or tv mentioning his name. One more thing, he disrespect the listeners, calling them the ‘stay on the issues crowd’,etc.
I find myself listening to John Gibson on Fox News radio more now. He does a good program.
He takes calls like I speak Spanish.
Yes, I speak and understand Spanish but I am not confident in the language. In a conversation with a Spanish speaker I often repeat my Spanish speaking companion's statements just to be sure that I have understood it. Rush does this “repeat and rinse” type of conversation with his callers.
Despite Rush’s failings he does a remarkable job for being stone deaf.
Day
>
Night
Dog-whistle much?
Fading? Before the internet I listened to Rush. Now I listen to Beck, Levin, Howie Carr (local talk), and EWTN/Catholic Answers —all streaming.
I’m sure most engaged conservatives are doing something similar.
Another factor is that Rush seems to me like a squish. The Republic is nearing its end. We need talkers with passion.
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