Limbaugh Again Demonstrates His Mean-Spirited Depravity

It has only been a few days since Americans learned of the tragic death of Robin Williams -- but that hasn't stopped right-wing radio creep Rush Limbaugh from trying to besmirch William's good name to attack those on the left, and promote his own vicious and hateful views. He has once again shown his depravity by saying the following on the public airways:

Now, what is the left’s worldview in general? What is it? If you had to attach not a philosophy but an attitude to a leftist worldview, it’s one of pessimism and darkness, sadness.
 
They’re never happy, are they? They’re always angry about something. No matter what they get, they’re always angry.
 
They are animated in large part by the false promises of America, because the promises of America are not for everyone, as we see each and every day. I mean, right herethere’s a story Fox News website. Do you know, it says right here, that the real reasons that Robin Williams killed himself are he was embarrassed at having to take television roles after a sterling movie career.
 He had to take movie roles that were beneath him, sequels and so forth, and he finally had to do television just to get a paycheck because he was in so much financial distress.He’d had some divorces that ripped up his net worth, and he had a big ranch in Napa that he couldn’t afford any longer and had to put up for sale, and a house in Tiburon that he couldn’t afford anymore. This is all what’s in the Fox News story.  
 
He had it all, but he had nothing. He made everybody else laugh but was miserable inside. I mean, it fits a certain picture, or a certain image that the left has.Talk about low expectations and general unhappiness and so forth. 

Limbaugh has been losing advertisers and listeners for a while now, and has been taken off several big radio stations because they just can't make a profit by playing his hateful show. I have to believe he didn't do himself any good with this attack on Robin Williams.

The truth is that while Limbaugh's popularity is dropping like a rock, Robin Williams was a beloved entertainer. As the chart below shows, a whopping 86% of Americans had a favorable opinion of Robin Williams (and 52% of them had a very favorable opinion), while only 8% say they had an unfavorable opinion. Limbaugh couldn't come close to those kind of numbers even at the height of his popularity (and his mean-spirited remarks may well contain a tinge of jealousy). At any rate, his remarks will only be appreciated by a tiny percentage of Americans -- and could well accelerate his loss of advertisers and listeners. I think Lewis Black probably gave the best reply to Limbaugh when he said:

FUCK YOU Rush Limbaugh. Your statements were beyond cruel and stupid. They were intolerable. Enough is enough from you. You are an idiot. Don't you ever demean the death of another human being. He was my friend. You disgust me.

That pretty much sums up my feelings too -- and I suspect a huge majority of Americans would agree. Limbaugh's remarks were beyond the pale, and should be rejected by decent people of all political persuasions.

The chart above was made from information contained in a new Rasmussen Poll. The survey was done on August 13th and 14th of a random national sample of 1,000 adults, and has a margin of error of 3 points.

(The caricature of Rush Limbaugh above is by the one and only DonkeyHotey.)

Willie And Kinky On The Radio Today

(This photo of Willie and Kinky is from Kinky's Facebook page.)

Willie Nelson and Kinky Friedman will be jointly giving interviews to a series of radio stations today from Willie's tour bus. They're dubbing it the initial broadcast of "Texas Herbal Radio". They say they will answer any and all questions asked of them in those interviews -- but they especially want to discuss the legalization of recreational marijuana and industrial hemp, and the need to support small farmers (issues they have both supported for a long time now).

I'm sure they'll also want to talk about Kinky's effort to become the Democratic nominee for Texas Agriculture Commissioner. Willie is fully supporting his longtime friend for that office (and the run-off election will be held on May 27th). Here is a list of radio stations that will be participating:

KLAQ (Q Rock)
El Paso 

KZPS (Lonestar 925)
Dallas

KTFW (Hank FM)
Fort Worth

Big Star 97 - syndicated
Arlington

KPFT
Houston

KETR
Commerce

KOOK, KERV
Kerrville

KTSA (News Talk 550)
San Antonio

94.9 The Outlaw
Wichita Falls

KMBH 
Harlingen

KHYI (The Range)
Dallas

KURV
McAllen

KTXD 47 - TV
Addison  

I fully support these two "Texas Treasures", and I agree that we need to support our small family farms, legalize marijuana and industrial hemp, and vote to elect Kinky as Agriculture Commissioner.

Stations Carrying Limbaugh Doing Poorly In The Ratings

(This caricature of Rush Limbaugh is by the inimitable DonkeyHotey.)

A few years ago, Rush Limbaugh was the king of talk radio and talk radio was very popular. Those days are gone. That is the opinion of industry expert Holland Cooke, who says:

The conversation really picked up on February 29, 2012, Leap Year Day which was Day 1 of this three-day Rush Limbaugh/Sandra Fluke faux pas. And, if we were studying the history of talk radio, you stick a pin in the timeline there because at that moment, a very well organized and relentless advertiser boycott effort which remains underway today, rendered that business inviable.

Hundreds of blue-chip national advertisers basically have not only wandered away from Rush Limbaugh and some of the other righties, they’ve abandoned the format entirely.  They are afraid to be heard on a news talk station because this man’s use of his free speech triggered the opposing viewpoint exercising THEIR right to free speech.

The boycotters are speaking and using the marketplace to say, “ENOUGH!”  So as a consequence of all of this, the very company that owns, for instance, The Rush Limbaugh Show, which owns a bunch of great big talk stations has actually demoted him to smaller talk stations in two really big markets.  You and I did an Ed Show about this at the time. In Los Angeles and San Francisco they moved him aside because his continuing presence was making it tough to make a go of it with the big stations.

So he was told to go sit at the kid’s table and the irony in this is that for years the radio righties have been cackling about progressive radio’s failure to attain their level of listenership while the radio lefties had to go sit at the kid’s table.  Well now he’s there. . .

So the short answer is talk radio as we know it, the crazy uncle righty politically monologue-based I’m right you’re wrong genre is mathematically in trouble.

How bad is it? Well look at the ratings of the stations carrying Rush Limbaugh's show in the biggest markets. The stations carrying Limbaugh are 22nd in New York, 37th in Los Angeles, 19th in Chicago, 21st in Dallas, and 27th in San Francisco. That's a far cry from where he was a couple of years ago. The company Rush works for has removed him from their big stations (because he was losing them too much market share and money), and put him on smaller stations with less power (and therefore less reach).

Now some will say that this is censorship and a violation of free speech -- but that is nonsense. The constitutional guarantee of free speech just guarantees that the government will not punish Rush (or anyone else) for their speech. It does not say the public at large, or the radio stations, can't act in their own interests. The public, including those urging an advertising boycott, have just as much right to free speech as Rush does -- and their speech has been very effective (costing him more than 3100 advertisers).

The truth is that the free market (which right-wingers say they support) has spoken, and it is saying it wants nothing to do with Limbaugh. His days of radio supremacy are over. He may or may not get a new contract, but if he does it will be for far less than he's now making. His marketability has fallen drastically.

Too Much Media Is Owned By Too Few

This is why Americans don't get every side of most issues -- just the corporate-approved side of the news. Anyone who wants news not biased to the point of view of the giant corporations just can't depend solely on the mainstream media. This makes it very important to protect the freedom of the internet, which many times is the only place to find the non-corporate side of any story.

Thoughts On Rush Limbaugh

(The caricature of Limbaugh on the left is from the inimitable DonkeyHotey.)

Let me preface my remarks by saying that I have never liked Rush Limbaugh very much. He has spent years trying to divide this country, and vilifying anyone with the temerity to disagree with his vicious right-wing politics. And while the Constitution guarantees him the right to spread his vile hate speech, I personally consider him to be a nasty and infected boil on the butt of our society.

But I also don't think he's going away any time soon. Much has been made in some liberal blogs (and on Facebook) recently about the story at Politico.com that says he could be dropped by Cumulus Media's 40 stations that carry him. I don't know if this threat by Cumulus to drop Limbaugh (and Sean Hannity) is just a negotiating ploy to lower what they currently pay Clear Channel to air Limbaugh's show, or whether Cumulus is just tired of the controversy surrounding Limbaugh.

What is obvious is that Cumulus has lost a ton of money, thanks to an effective boycott that has caused over 1200 national advertisers to drop their support of the show -- and demanded that their advertising no longer appear on that show (or on Hannity's show). While some of those advertisers may agree with the hateful ideas Limbaugh propagates, they care a lot more about making money -- and they are not about to let the controversy surrounding Limbaugh affect their profit margin. And the same is true of Cumulus Media. They are not in business to lose money.

Cumulus may decide to continue carrying Limbaugh's show, but if they do it will be at a much, much lower price. And if they drop Limbaugh, Clear Channel will likely find other channels to carry him -- but that will also be at a much lower price. The golden days are over for Limbaugh, and his next contract with Clear Channel (if there is one) will be for far less money than his previous contract.

The boycott of Limbaugh's advertisers has been very effective -- and it should continue. While Limbaugh has the constitutional right to spew his hate, other people have the right to oppose that. But if Cumulus does drop him, that does not mean it's the end of his show. However, it might be the beginning of the end -- and for now, that's enough.

Advertisers Avoiding Rush Like The Plague

(This caricature of Rush Limbaugh is by DonkeyHotey.)

I'm sure Rush Limbaugh thought it would be a short-term problem when advertisers starting leaving his show in droves. Things would die down, and the advertisers would return. But that hasn't happened. According to one executive at Cumulus Media, 48 out of 50 of their biggest advertisers now require that their advertising on that network not be played on the show of Rush Limbaugh (or his right-wing buddy Sean Hannity). This means Rush Limbaugh is not the money machine that he once was for the radio stations carrying his show.

Will Rush survive? He well could, because there are still a lot of right-wing nuts that listen to him. But with the radio stations bleeding money during his show's hours, you can bet that Rush's next contract won't be nearly as lucrative as his last one. After all, the primary reason these stations exist is to make money -- and they won't pay him huge money if they can't sell advertising on his show. Here's how Media Matters sums up the current situation:

As numerous members of the conservative movement flee from the Heritage Foundation's flawed immigration study, conservative talker Rush Limbaugh has maintained a stalwart defense of the organization.

Not a surprise considering Rush Limbaugh's syndicator, Premiere Radio Networks, is the single largest independent contractor to the Heritage Foundation according to their latest 990 filing with the IRS, receiving $2,236,555 from the think tank.

With advertisers fleeing his show, and as a result radio companies suffering major losses, the fiscal sponsorship of the conservative movement is now fiscally critical. A "very high ranking" official at Cumulus, the owner of Rush and Sean Hannity's flagship station WABC, told Radio Ink, "Forty-eight of the top 50 network advertisers have 'excluded Rush and Hannity' orders. Every major national ad agency has the same dictate."

Without wingnut welfare, which has also included sponsorships from FreedomWorks, Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity's shows would not be financially viable.

The financial relationship between the conservative movement and its radio hosts has existed for years -- Heritage has been a major sponsor of Premiere Radio talent, specifically Limbaugh and Sean Hannity, according to a 2011 report by Ken Vogel of Politico -- however with Limbaugh and Hannity's recent well publicized problems attracting sponsorship to their programs the role of the conservative movement is not rightwing radios key sponsor.

Internet Growing As Source For News

Hundreds of years ago, all people depended on word of mouth for their source of want is happening in the world (news). But then the printing press was invented, and soon people were getting most of their news from newspapers. And as new inventions came around, the source of news for most people changed -- first to the radio, then television, and cable TV.

And it does not stop there. With the invention of the internet, a new and growing source of news was created -- and it looks like the internet may now be the most popular source of news today. At least, that's what a new poll (conducted between April 22nd and 28th of 863 registered voters -- with a 3.4 point margin of error) shows. The poll is by Fairleigh Dickinson University's PublicMind.

The poll's respondents were asked what their primary source of news was, and the following numbers were reported:

Internet...............44%
Local TV...............43%
Cable news...............38%
Network TV...............33%
Newspapers...............31%
Talk radio...............21%
Public radio...............18%
Comedy TV...............10%
Other...............5%

The numbers for the leaders are still within the margin of error, so it cannot be definitively be said that the internet is already number one. But if it is not already the number one source of news, it soon will be -- because it is growing very fast. Just a couple of years ago, the internet numbers would not have been nearly this high. And age is a large factor in the growth of the internet as a primary news source -- with younger people relying more on the internet than older people. Here are the numbers by age of those who list the internet as their primary news source:

18 to 29...............83%
30 to 44...............57%
45 to 59...............42%
60 plus...............19%

Limbaugh Show Bleeding Money

Premiere Networks is the organization that Rush Limbaugh actually works for. They are the company that distributes his radio show to small stations around the country to be aired. They make their money by selling expensive national advertisements, which the stations that carry the show are obligated to run. After running the national ads for Premiere, the local stations then run some local ads to make money for themselves. Until a couple of weeks ago, it was a lucrative arrangement for everyone concerned.

As the chart above shows, Limbaugh's unwarranted, abusive, and defamatory attacks on a young college student (and on women in general) has thrown a big monkey wrench in the business of hate radio. Decent people across the country have risen up and demanded the companies supporting Rush by advertising on his show stop it immediately or be subjected to boycotts of their products -- and that pressure has become so great that the advertisers are deserting Limbaugh's show in droves. It has now climbed to more than 150 companies that have refused to allow their ads to be aired on Limbaugh's show.

It has become so bad that Premiere Networks has informed the local radio stations that for two weeks there will be no breaks for national ads (the weeks beginning on March 12th and March 19th). They didn't give a reason, but the reason would seem obvious. They don't have any ads to run in those breaks (and even some charities have refused to allow free public service announcements to run on Limbaugh's show), and they don't want the show surrounded by "dead air" (radio silence). That would make the flight of advertisers away from the show even more obvious.

And it has gotten even worse for Limbaugh. Not only has he hurt his own show, but he's also hurt the shows of his fellow hate radio talkers (like Hannity, Savage, and Beck). Many of the advertisers have pulled their ads from not just Limbaugh's show, but from all of the hate radio shows.

Limbaugh has made a half-hearted apology (actually a non-apology apology), and I'm sure he and Premiere Networks are hoping the furor will die down in a couple of weeks, the advertisers will come back, and things will return to normal. There's a good chance that won't happen though. The demographic that most advertisers want is the 18 to 54 age group (especially women), and there aren't too many of those in his audience. He has mostly older white men as listeners, so the advertisers may just look elsewhere to spend their advertising dollars -- where they can get more bang for their buck.

And a new poll shows that the public didn't think much of Limbaugh's "apology" anyway. A Rasmussen Poll showed that only 29% of the public thinks Limbaugh's apology was sincere, while 53% thought it was not. In other words, he's not out of the hole he dug for himself yet -- and he may not get out of it.  

Limbaugh Needs To Go

Rush Limbaugh has showed his perverse hatred of all that is good about America for quite a while now. But his latest repeated attacks on a Georgetown University student called to testify before Congress is way over the line of common decency. In fact, it is nothing less than an attack on all American women. And it must stop!

I won't reprint his sick comments on this blog. If you have a high tolerance for stupidity and hatred, you can go here, here, and here to read about them. Frankly, I think it is time to get this bloated fool off the radio. He has polluted the minds of too many Americans for too long -- and it is time for it to end.

There will be those who will remind me that the First Amendment gives him the right to say whatever he wants to say -- no matter how sick and perverse it may be. I agree with them. But he's not the only person with rights in this country. As Americans, we also have rights -- the right to raise our voices against him and to boycott any company that promotes Limbaugh by advertising on his show.

And many decent Americans have already started to do just that. A literal storm has been created on social media sites like Twitter and Facebook, and Limbaugh's advertisers are starting to feel the heat. So far, five of those advertisers have withdrawn their ads from his show (Sleep Number, The Sleep Train, Heart and Body Extract, Oreck Vacuum Cleaners, and Quicken Loans). I urge you to join this action and write to the companies supporting Limbaugh -- and until they pull their ads from his show, boycott their products. Here are some of those advertisers:

LifeLock
1-800-LifeLock (543-3562)
60 East Rio Salado Parkway, Suite 400, Tempe, AZ 85281
For media inquiries, please contact Tami Nealy,
 Senior Director of Corporate Communications
 (call 1-480-457-2127 or email tami@lifelock.com).


Tax Resolution Services
Online Ad on Rush Site
1-866-IRSPROBLEMS


ProFlowers
Sales or Service: 1-800-580-2913
Phone: 800.580.2913 


eharmony
300 N. Lake Ave., Suite 1111
Pasadena, CA 91101
media@eharmony.com 626.795.4814
FAX 626.585.4040 


CARBONITE, Inc.
617-587-1100
177 Huntington Avenue, Boston, MA 02115
Direct Dial Office: 617-587-1100 EXT:1115


Mid-West Life Insurance Company of Tennessee 
9151 Grapevine Hwy.North Richland Hills, TX 76180
Phone (800) 733-1110
(ads on rushlimbaugh.com)


AutoZone Inc.
901-495-7185; Fax: 901-495-8374
P.O. Box 2198, Memphis, TN 38101 

LegalZoom 
800-773-0888; Fax: 323-962-8300 

Citrix Online (GoToMyPC)
6500 Hollister Avenue, Goleta, CA 93117
Phone: 805-690-6400; Fax: 805-690-6471 
ALSO KNOWN AS GOTOMEETING.COM


American Forces Network
Contact Us: @MyAFN.net


Mission Pharmacal Company
10999 IH-10 West Suite 1000
P.O. Box 786099
San Antonio, TX 78278-6099
Telephone: (800) 531-3333


Life Quotes, Inc.
32045 Castle Court Evergreen, CO 80439
1-800-670-5433 

Contact: Michelle Matlock, Senior Managing Editor (800)556-9393, x.335

Lending Tree
(704) 541-5351 

NOTE: Now Bill O'Reilly has jumped on the hate bandwagon to support Limbaugh. He is repeating the disgusting things Limbaugh has said. I guess we should have expected the idiots at Fox News to do this.

Is Right-Wing Hate Radio Dying ?

Although right-wingers like to claim that the media is against them, that is simply not true. Not only do they have a television "news" network that spouts right-wing propaganda 24 hours a day (Fox News), but they haven't had any problem in getting their views on any of the other television news networks either. The mis-named "liberal media" have been very kind to right-wingers in recent years.

But the most reliable proponent of right-wing hate talk for quite a while now has been talk radio. Talk radio hosts like Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, Glenn Beck, Michael Savage, Mark Levin and others have for years spewed a daily diet of fringe right-wing hate talk (and their audience was large enough to make them all rich doing it). But there are signs now that the era of right-wing hate radio may be coming to an end.

Several months ago markets in places like Salt Lake City and Philadelphia dropped radio shows by Hannity and Beck (including the station in Philadelphia where Beck got his start). That was a clue that something was happening to right-wing talk radio. Now we learn that last Fall the number of listeners dropped precipitously (in spite of a campaign where the right was energized), and these hate-talkers have been unable to boost the numbers since then.

The ratings people are saying that Hannity and Levin have lost 28% of their listeners. It has been even worse for Rush Limbaugh -- a drop of about 33%. And Glenn Beck is down nearly 50%. Those are some huge losses, and it's starting to worry the station managers.

And to make matters even worse, the listener demographic is not the one that most advertisers want (the 18 to 54 age group). It seems that most of the listeners of right-wing talk radio are older people -- and as they die off they are not being replaced by younger listeners. In fact, the younger the listener, the less likely they are tuning in to right-wing talk radio.

But it's not just that these hate-talk jockeys can't replace their older viewers. It seems that many people have just tired of the same old hate-talk every day. As one industry insider pointed out, you can only say "Obama is a socialist" so many times and then people tire of hearing it (even many who believe it).

There are still enough listeners to keep hate talk radio going for a while, but the question now is how long? How long will it be before the advertisers decide their money is spent better in other venues? When that happens (and it looks like it coming) right-wing hate talk radio will die. And this country will be better for that.