Glenn Beck is bringing his streaming television show TheBlaze TV, over to the Dish Network. Currently he's believed to be making more money as an internet streaming show than he did on Fox, but he's reaching far fewer viewers.
TheBlaze TV, which revealed several months ago that it had over 300,000 subscribers paying $99.95 a year or $9.95 a month, said that number was still accurate. The online network noted that it had been spending less on marketing lately and more on programming in preparation for cable and satellite TV. Mr. Balfe wrote in the blog post that he had come to believe that the payment model used by cable and satellite companies would remain in place for some time, despite efforts by outsiders to chip away at it. “It’s smart for us to take advantage of that,” he wrote.
You can read a story about it in the
NY Times here.
So here he comes again, more raging against Obama and any other Democrat who happens to be in office.
While I wish people well in their attempts to drive Rush Limbaugh off the airwaves, I think that we need to understand something. We can drive off their advertisers and ruin their business model, but as long as people really want to see this crap, they will. And their are people who will subscribe and pay for the privilege of watching them, which renders advertisers pointless.
It's still good to limit their reach, but in the end, I almost think of people like Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh as being rather invincible, at least in the short term. They've been polluting the airwaves for a long time, and they have an audience of devoted listeners who are unlikely to ever stop listening.