We've had our first dramatic, indisputable success in Flushing Rush. A major corporation acknowledges its financial crisis is so dire, it voluntarily delists itself from the NASDAQ. It issues a press release stating that advertisers boycotting Rush impacted the bottom line, while very clearly identifying Rush Limbaugh as a primary reason for its fall from grace.
Rush Limbaugh — crashing all of talk radio?
After eight months of scouring reports, weighing comments, and interpreting scant data, we have unmistakable proof that Rush was lying when he characterized us as "five or six little Democrat operatives in their pajamas in the basement of their parents' house", and our impact as "like losing a couple of french fries in the container when it's delivered to you at the drive-thru."
And it feels — good, but also somewhat mixed.
Yes, we can Flush Rush. And we will. But in doing so, we're using our free speech rights to introduce new information into the free market that will necessarily have unintended consequences. Rush Limbaugh is at the top of the heap. In providing information to advertisers that talk radio is being used for hate speech, we are providing some of them with the incentive to avoid all of talk radio. That may have an impact on talk radio shows that we do not necessarily wish to injure.
No one ever made an omelette without cracking a few eggs.
Limbaugh's streaming audience share dropped
from 18.4% in January to 9.6% in September,
knocking him from first to second place
Rush Limbaugh's so-called EIB Network is a network in name only. It really is a brand for a production company that consists of Rush and his small crew. The Limbaugh team produce content that is carried, and made available (in radio industry parlance, syndicated) by Clear Channel's talk radio subsidiary, Premiere Networks.
At one time, radio station ownership was restricted. Many of the restrictions were swept away, resulting in behemoth companies like Clear Channel and Cumulus. Yet ownership is still a result of the intermix of the market, geography, and history.
Because of Premiere Network's desire to have one local station for Limbaugh in each market, Premiere Networks has contracted with about 40 Cumulus radio stations to carry Limbaugh. Same for other radio networks, such as CBS and Dial Global.
Many of us anticipated that the first real fallout from the advertiser boycott would come next year, when Cumulus contracts for the Rush Limbaugh Show expire. We did not anticipate that Dial Global would be the first network to fall because of the advertiser boycott (and the other issues identified by Dial Global).
The reason this is a surprise — and a concern — is that Dial Global syndicates several popular progressive talk show programs, and other programs that are not generally characterized by Limbaugh-style hate speech. Among Dial Global's talk show hosts are Charles Osgood, Dennis Miller, Ed Schultz, Stephanie Miller, Clark Howard, Neal Boortz, Michael Smerconish, Bill Press, and Thom Hartmann.
To be sure, talk show hosts with viable programs can, and do migrate from one network to another. For example, Michael Savage has recently moved to Cumulus. One network's loss may be another network's gain.
Like Dial Global, Cumulus has reported millions in losses due to Rush Limbaugh. As a subsidiary of Clear Channel — a company taken private by its owner (Bain Capital) — Premiere Networks has access to deep funding, and also some ability to shield its financial health from public scrutiny.
Dial Global has not announced a bankruptcy, but their press release warns of serious financial trouble. If Dial Global is on the verge of failure, we know that Premiere Networks (which has greater Limbaugh exposure) must also be under significant pressure.
The Flush Rush Movement
Flush Rush is a general concept with tactics popularized by Spocko. The concept was used to drive Glenn Beck from Fox News. The basic idea is simple information sharing.
We know, for example, that currently, about seventy percent of Rush Limbaugh's sponsors do not know that they are sponsoring his show. We simply tell them, so they can make better choices concerning with whom their brand name is associated.
Glenn Beck was on one cable television station. Rush Limbaugh is on 600 radio stations, on a variety of networks, and each radio station has its own local advertisers. The Flush Rush project is necessarily more challenging, and more complex than Stop Beck.
Many groups have used the Flush Rush expression, and various groups have adopted the name. When the Rush hit the fan last March, I joined about a dozen such groups on Facebook, primarily because Facebook Groups seemed to have an appealing feature for organizing an advertiser boycott. In brief, comments cause a thread to float to the top, and threads at the top get the most attention -- useful for coordinating an action among different individuals.
Facebook, it turns out, also presents some serious complications. Posting to advertisers' Facebook pages may gain publicity, but Facebook penalizes anyone who posts too often. So using Facebook for any sort of serious activism entails discovering the limits of what Facebook will allow. Penalties for infractions are imposed without warning, and may include up to a sixty day block preventing a particular type of transgression.
One Facebook group that I joined went beyond the concept of picking a company, and having everyone contact that company simultaneously. This group sought to coordinate contacting not just a target of the moment, but all advertisers, systematically and continuously. Because Limbaugh claims 18,000 sponsors (and I judge that to be a reasonable estimate, unlike his false claim of an audience of 20 million), tracking and contacting all of his sponsors is a huge undertaking.
Enter an ally, Stop Rush (which grew out of Stop Beck). A crack database coder volunteered to create a method to track not only who is sponsoring Rush, but every instance of every ad heard by a nationwide network of Rush monitors. Thus, we have access to the Stop Rush database.
Our response to the Dial Global situation will be to refine our capability. We will identify not only the radio station on which a sponsor's ads are heard, we will develop the ability to differentiate among radio networks. Thus, we will be able to target not just all stations, but specific networks (for local advertising).
Finally, Flush Rush and Stop Rush are just two parts of a much larger network. It is important to emphasize both the volunteer nature of this movement, and its widespread support. Limbaugh may not yet realize how his bigotry and arrogance feed our determination. But eventually he will come to understand.
Oh, I nearly forgot to mention: the Stop Rush database is modular, and capable of being used in other, future campaigns. Got any plans?
The diarist is active in Flush Rush on Facebook:
Flush Rush on Facebook: http://facebook.com/...
Stop Rush database: http://stoprush.net
My Stop Rush blog posts: http://dailykos.com/...
Twitter hashtag: #stoprush
