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NEWS AND VIEWS THAT IMPACT LIMITED CONSTITUTIONAL GOVERNMENT

"There is danger from all men. The only maxim of a free government ought to be to trust no man living with
power to endanger the public liberty." - - - - John Adams

Friday, June 19, 2015

Rush Limbaugh’s downward ratings spiral



The Long Goodbye?

  • While the column below is by a left-wing site, ratings are ratings.  I have seen Limbaugh's ratings decline first hand in my SoCal radio market.  Conservatives like Sean Hannity and Mark Levin have also seen a ratings decline.
  • Personally I grew tired of brainless cheerleader Conservative talk (GOP is good, Demo is bad).  For the last five years I have moved over to independent Conservative talk show host Dr. Michael Savage who is not afraid to directly attack the open borders, Leftist drift of the GOP.


(Salon)  -  The good news for Rush Limbaugh: One month after being notified he was getting dumped by his Boston talk radio host station, the talker has a new AM home in the city.
The bad news: The station 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.
The station, WKOX, is the type of “bottom-rung” affiliate that Limbaugh was rarely associated with during his halcyon days as the king of talk radio. But those days seem to be dwindling as the Boston fall from grace has previously played out for Limbaugh in places like Los Angeles and Indianapolis. In each instance, Limbaugh exited a prosperous, longtime radio home and was forced to settle for an also-ran outlet with miniscule ratings.
Dumped in Los Angeles
I started listening to Rush on day one in L.A. on 50,000 watt KFI.  He
was a powerhouse.  Today KFI has dumped Rush on to low rated KEIB.
Three months later, Limbaugh's KEIB is a ratings disaster, coming in 37th place in the second largest radio market in America with a .5 rating
share in March, the most recent month available.
.

How small is KEIB's audience? So small that eleven non-English radio 
stations have larger audiences in Los Angeles. And so small that KEIB actually 
trails four college-run, non-commercial stations in the market. (Read More)

Here’s what happened in Boston, and it’s becoming a trend. In May, WRKO announced it wasn’t renewing Limbaugh’s program, which meant the host would have to find a new home on the dial. No problem, right? Hopping around to another affiliate isn’t that unusual in the world of syndicated radio. What was unusual, at least for Limbaugh, was that not one other Boston station moved to pick up his show. Years ago, general managers lined up for the chance to broadcast Limbaugh’s ratings heavyweight show and jumped whenever it became available in the market.
Dr. Savage is my choice for
independent Conservative talk radio.

But no more. With ratings issues in recent years and selling the show to advertisers becoming increasingly difficult, stations seem reluctant to pay a steep price for Limbaugh’s program. (But yes, Limbaugh’s syndicator, Premiere Radio Networks, still pays the talker $50 million a year.)
In Boston, Limbaugh had to once again be bailed out by his corporate bosses. Formerly known as Clear Channel, iHeartMedia owns the syndication company that produces and sells Limbaugh’s radio show. iHeartMedia also owns hundreds of radio stations.
So with no takers in Boston, iHeartMedia turned to its lowly WKOX station, scrubbed its Spanish language format, and will flip it to “Talk 1430” on June 29, where listeners will hear a hodgepodge of far-right talk mixed Fox Sports Radio programming.
And don’t expect Limbaugh to turn things around for WKOX. His show struggled on WRKO, which boasts a 50,000-watt signal. In contrast, WKOX broadcasts from a tiny 5,000-watt signal, which doesn’t even cover the entire Boston metropolitan area.
Does this demotion sound familiar? The same Limbaugh farewell just played out in the red state of Indiana where the talker was dumped by his AM home of 22 years, WIBC in Indianapolis. After WIBC announced the programming divorce (the station was reportedly having trouble finding advertisers for Rush’s show), no other stations in the market stepped forward to buy Limbaugh’s program, which meant he had to be bailed out by iHeartMedia. The radio giant shoehorned Limbaugh onto its lowly rated all-sports channel in the market. (Current rating: 0.5.)
Read More . . . .


Conservative Talk Decline
The 2011 ratings chart shows Limbaugh at 15 million listeners and Hannity at 14 million.  The American public may be getting tired of an often mindless format that worships any asshole with an "R" after his name.
(Talkers.com)

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

You are full of shit....Rush is more popular than ever.
Staop lying you libtard asshole moron!

Gary said...

I like Rush and he still has the #1 talk show. But ratings are ratings. Numbers don't lie.

Calling me a "lib" proves you know nothing about true Constitutional Conservatism.