We've all heard that Rush has a lot of listeners, and certainly that's true. But does he really have the 20 million that he claims? I mean, given what he says we know that he is
(a) probably bad at math (as are many, many people)
(b) not particularly interested in telling the truth
Keith Olbermann had a segment on this point on Countdown last night, and a writer for the Washington Post has also worked on the subject. Olbermann points out that the methodology used to estimate TV viewers versus radio listeners is very different.
According to Olbermann, the estimate of the TV audience actually looks at the average of number per minute and takes that average. For radio, the number is based on the number that ever listened during the week - the cume - as opposed to the average.
What does this mean? This means that the Limbaugh numbers could be grossly inflated (what a surprise).
Using radio's methodology, or simply seat of the pants methodology, we'd get:
According to what Limbaugh delights in calling "the drive-by media," the number varies wildly. Is it 30 million (Pat Buchanan on MSNBC), 20 million (Time magazine, ABC News), 19 million (Fox News), 14 million (CNN), or "14.2 million to about 25 million" (The Washington Post)?
But, using a methodology that is more equivalent to the method used by TV, we'd get.
Premiere Radio Networks, Limbaugh's national syndicator, estimated last year that 3.59 million people were in Limbaugh's audience during an average quarter-hour of his program, based on a review of Arbitron's piecemeal data about hundreds of stations.
For more on the article click here
The implications for this are important. Limbaugh is certainly very popular, and he appeals to a group that is loud about what it wants. But if his audience is only 4 million (let's be generous) then he doesn't have an audience of 14 to 25 million. And the faint-hearted Republicans should take courage and stand up for moving away from the nuttiness.
And we should all, never, ever, take any Republican numbers at face value.