Bad For Business: Rush Limbaugh Dropped By One Of His "Original" Affiliates

[brooklynite]

Source: Media Matters

California's KOWL has dropped Rush Limbaugh's radio show from its lineup. Describing the station as "one of the original Rush Limbaugh affiliates," the announcement release emphasized that the decision was based exclusively on "economic reasons," citing Limbaugh's "toxic brand."

The release elaborated on the economic reasons: "And now the free market has spoken. Rush has repelled local, regional, and national advertisers from KOWL costing the stations [sic] thousands of dollars in advertisers." It went on to state that "advertisers would rather just avoid the whole station then [sic] take the risk of being associated with Rush's increasingly toxic brand."

KOWL's explanation for dropping Limbaugh's show is very similar to reasons offered by Boston's WRKO and Indianapolis' WIBC, which both recently dropped Limbaugh from their lineups.

...snip...

KOWL Station Manager Steve Harness offered some behind-the-scenes insight and touched on the additional problem of Limbaugh's syndicator fees (which at this point adds injury to injury by having radio stations that are losing money due to Limbaugh also pay him for the disservice of losing them money), explaining in the statement:

"I spent a lot of time negotiating directly with Limbaugh's syndicator. I told them that we didn't want to lose his show, but that we couldn't pay him a fee in addition to him losing us money repelling advertisers and they refused to drop the monthly free. Ironically, they lost the fee anyway and a long-time affiliate."

Read more: http://mediamatters.org/blog/2015/08/11/rush-limbaugh-dropped-by-californias-kowl-one-o/204885

[shenmue]

1. Yay!

[yeoman6987]

2. His next contract will definitely not be 20 million a year

He better hope for a mill a year the rate things are going.

[lastlib]

3. WOOT!! WOOT!!

. . . .

"...one small step for a man, one giant leap for mankind!" Great news! Limbaugh is goin' down!

[George II]

4. Good news, but unfortunately they cancelled over money, not principles.

[mwooldri]

8. Sadly it's all about the $$$s. period.

Progressive talk didn't pay. So the formats flipped to ones that do. Now Mr. Limbaugh's radio programming isn't paying. The station owners I suppose could switch out Mr. Limbaugh's programming with a week long pledge drive a la public radio and try and get funds that way but this is the complete opposite of how Mr. Limbaugh works. So they had to part ways. Oh well...

[Indepatriot]

20. Money is their ONLY principle...

[NYCButterfinger]

5. Good. I am not a fan of Limbaugh. Too crazy.

[Warpy]

6. His model only worked when it was free programming

There were enough national advertisers to do that, and local stations had set times for local advertising. Once the national ads started to dry up, they had to start charging for the great privilege of airing Fatso's swill.

Didn't work.

[Iliyah]

7. RW took over the only Progressive radio station we had, i.e.

Stephanie Miller, et al. (Los Angeles).

Hate radio has been rampant for way too long.

[yuiyoshida]

9. So I wonder if Mr. Titanic

has hit an iceberg? His ratings have been steadily sinking.

[NJCher]

10. It's unusual

for a business person to say something this candid. Harness used loaded words, like "repelling" and "toxic." There's definitely some bad blood there.


Cher

[PatrickforO]

11. So...basically the guy can be a total slimeball - just over the top foul and disgusting...

But he's fine as long as he's making the station money.

As soon as our profits begin to dry up, he's out of there...

Sigh.

Welcome to our capitalist utopia.

[eggplant]

12. I don't understand your sigh.

People who hate the blowhard started organized, targeted boycotts against his advertisers causing them to drop their ad buys causing stations to lose even more money causing them to drop his sorry ass.

Capitalism worked just fine in this case.

[PatrickforO]

18. My sigh was because the capitalists had to be forced. They didn't just do the right thing.

People or organizations who just do the right thing are getting rare. Too rare.

[eggplant]

19. Yes, but in a free society people are free to be assholes.

Otherwise it stops being free.

As for the capitalists, they have a legal, fiscal obligation to their shareholders. If their shareholders are assholes or just mostly apathetic, then that limits their ability to "do the right thing".

I do agree that doing the right thing (when the situation is clear) is something that not enough people do. It is the one trait I have stressed with my kids. It isn't important to me whether they are smart, or brave, or funny. Just nice. It is important to me that they are nice. After that, my only concerns are their safety, health, and happiness. In that order.

[Chellee]

16. I do understand.

People should not do the right thing because they hope to gain a reward.
People should not do the right thing because they hope to avoid punishment.
People should do the right thing because its the right thing to do.

Instead we get people doing the wrong thing (happily, gleefully) because they hope to gain a reward. And then when they turn around and do the right thing because they want to avoid punishment, we're supposed to be over the moon about it.

Don't get me wrong, I'm thrilled, truly over the moon, that they have taken him off the air.

And yet, I do understand your sigh. It would have been nice if they could have just done the right thing in the beginning because it was the right thing to do.

Sigh.

[Spitfire of ATJ]

13. Don'tcha love how they say, "The market has spoken"?

Makes them believe Capitalism is alive and well.

[allan01]

14. Ye Ha :)

blows loud cruise ship horn.

[alp227]

15. Not a big loss for the area, since this station is a 1 kW station in South Lake Tahoe.

That community can tune to Reno's KKOH 780 (50 kW station very strong in the region) or Grass Valley's KNCO 830 (weaker) to hear Rush live.

But this is a radio station in a small community (thus a thin revenue stream already).

It looks like KOWL is replacing Rush with Dennis Prager. http://www.krltfm.com/kowl-am-radio-lake-tahoe/

[oasis]

17. Couldn't ya wait 'till after the elections? Please.

[Elmer S. E. Dump]

21. I sense a major coronary is in his immediate future.

[Angry Dragon]

22. toxic rush

[Dont call me Shirley]

23. Its no longer acceptable to be a bigoted cruel asshole.

[love_katz]

24. Hahaha.

Love it!!!!!!! Flush Rush.

[demigoddess]

25. oh!!!

[Gothmog]

26. Boycotts work

Clear Channell is losing money on Rush