Late last Friday, the syndicator of Rush Limbaugh's radio show announced a mass revolt of national corporations, telling affiliates to pull all ads from these 98 corporations from not just Limbaugh's show, but all the far-right radio talk shows. Now that has extended to a full two-week suspension of all national advertising.
Via Think Progress, RadioInfo.com reports that Premiere Networks informed its affiliate of the suspension in another memo.
Attention Traffic Managers of Premiere News/Talk Affiliates:
We are suspending the requirement to run barter spots for two weeks, March 12th and March 19th, for our News/Talk affiliates only.
Please replace/re-traffic any Premiere barter spots immediately. Contractual requirements to run barter spots are being suspended for these two weeks only. Replace them with Lifelock and Lear Financial or a local spot of your choice.
Premiere provides the Limbaugh show to affiliates in exchange for several minutes of national ads that Premiere provides. These are the so-called "barter spots," and they're the ads that provide the revenue for Premiere off of these talk radio shows, along with fees from affiliates to run the programming. The two-week suspension of these ads is "unusual" according to RadioInfo.com, and is further indication of just how toxic Limbaugh is at the moment.
But that's likely only momentarily, at least in Premiere's thinking. They're probably banking on the Limbaugh flap blowing over in the next few weeks, and going back to business as usual. In the meantime, local advertising (and lots of free ads in the form of public service announcements) will fill the gap.
Premiere wants to just wait it out. Don't let them and don't let Limbaugh off the hook. Sign our petition to all of Limbaugh's advertisers telling them to keep their ads off of his show permanently.