Sounds like a good portion of this is the free market at work.
When your fees are higher than what buyers are willing to pay they drop you if you won’t accept less.
I didn’t realize Rush made $38 million a year. Sounds like this contract renewal will pay him less. Radio ad revenues are down, listenership is down.
I expect Rush will still be around, just that his new contract won’t pay him nearly that much money. As you were saying, this is the free market at work. I expect Rush will still be in radio, still nationally syndicated, but will be paid based on the market situation now.
You can tell from his advertisers that he has had trouble. I mean, how many Mahindra tractors can you sell to a radio audience. More than that, he was hurt badly by his Cruz love this cycle, and demographically his audience is getting older.
Now, with his kids’ books, maybe he can leapfrog to the next generation and get them as listeners.