Rush Limbaugh — desperate!
On Friday, October 26, Rush Limbaugh tried to reverse the downward spiral. Rush launched a two-pronged attack on his two disastrous fronts — "dwindling" ad revenues, and an audience that, in at least one audience segment, is barely half what it was in January of 2012.
When Rush gets desperate, he showcases the new advertisers and new listeners. Except that he appears not to have any.
Limbaugh routinely "educates" his audience with sham calls, using shills from his syndication company's Premiere On Call subdivision. These callers miraculously get through to Rush (on the direct line?), and typically seem to offer precisely the soft ball comments that feed the Limbaugh narrative. Today the Rush team scripted in a bonus: the opportunity to breezily pretend that Rush is a perfect angel on the air.
Out of Limbaugh's millions of listeners, two new listeners in a row called in today. By chance, they were both Democrats, and they both blessed Rush for showing them the light. Here's a transcript of one of the calls:
BEGIN TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: Joseph in Latrobe, Pennsylvania. I knew it had to be Latrobe. Welcome to the program.
CALLER: Hi, Rush. I can't believe I got through. Thanks for taking my call.
RUSH: You bet. Great to have you here.
CALLER: Hey, I've been a registered Democrat all my life, and —
RUSH: Another one.
CALLER: Yeah, well, I'm not no elected official, but you changed me over. I just started listen to you about three months ago, you and Hannity. Thank God we got you people out there.
RUSH: What made you change your mind or start listening three months ago?
CALLER: Ah, I don't know. Everybody says you was a nut. (laughing) I said, "Well, if he's a nut, I better listen to him."
RUSH: Yeah, you know, I can't legally do this, I really can't even legally get too specific, but I would love to show you our audience ratings from a particular point in time last spring. And then I would like to show you, of that massive increase, how many have held on, because they were curious. What the hell's going on on that show? And they tuned in here, and like you, they found that what they'd heard was going on on this show wasn't going on. That, in fact, it's smart, intelligent, true, and enjoyable at the same time. That's what you found, my guess is. [emphasis added]
—Rush Limbaugh: Another New Listener Finds Out This Program Doesn't Match What He'd Heard, October 26, 2012
"Last spring" and
"What they'd heard was going on on this show wasn't going on." Umm, that's an obvious reference to attacking Sandra Fluke. Never happened, folks.
And, "I can't legally do this..." I can't legally give you the truth about my audience.
Rush alludes to his audience share as if it is earth-shattering, but alas! The law prevents him from mentioning the real numbers.
What law might that be? Perhaps the law that enables Rush to avoid embarrassment: by at least one measure his audience share has dropped from 18.4 percent to 9.6 percent. That's a drop of nearly half. Rush has also dropped from first to second place in streamed talk radio audience share. Premiere Networks is, of course, sitting on all other details.
So much for Limbaugh's vast audience. Today Rush also attempted to burnish his reputation for attracting big name advertisers. He announced with considerable fanfare that advertisers are flooding into his show. Drums! Trumpets! Cymbals! And the new advertiser is: Blinds.com.
Curiously, Blinds.com has been a Rush Limbaugh advertiser all along. My records show them advertising on Rush as far back as March 2012, when I first started listening. Blinds.com was getting hammered for sponsoring Rush in April. The Stop Rush database indicates that Blinds.com advertised on Rush in May. And Blinds.com has been a particularly heavy advertiser on Rush since September.
One of the database contributors added a comment for today's (October 26) Rush-voiced Blinds.com ad that made me smile — they must have had the same reaction I had: Blinds.com is not a new Rush Limbaugh advertiser!
10/26/12 |
KFI |
Heard an ad |
Rush-new sponsor-lol |
In fact, Stop Rush records that Rush personally voiced a Blinds.com ad a month ago:
09/26/12 |
KFI |
Heard an ad |
ad by Rush |
If Rush personally voiced the Blinds.com ad in September, how could he pretend they were
a new advertiser this late in October?
I also wonder if Blinds.com knows that Rush is spending their expensive voiced ad time gushing about the flood of other "new" advertisers. (You know — all the other new advertisers that don't really seem to exist...)
Here's some contact info, please let Blinds.com know how you feel about them sponsoring hate radio:
The
StopRush database has all the details on Blinds.com.
Flush Rush on Facebook: http://facebook.com/...
Stop Rush database: http://stoprush.net
My Stop Rush blog posts: http://dailykos.com/...