Rush Limbaugh: Don’t blame me for WABC’s declining ad sales
Limbaugh, fed up with bosses, could leave for WOR when his contract expires at the end of the year
Comments (133)BY DAVID HINCKLEY / NEW YORK DAILY NEWS
PUBLISHED: SUNDAY, MAY 5, 2013, 6:45 PM
UPDATED: MONDAY, MAY 6, 2013, 6:05 AM
JULIE SMITH/AP
Talk show host Rush Limbaugh
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Rush Limbaugh insists it’s not his fault that ad revenue has dropped at his flagship WABC radio station — and if his boss keeps saying it is, Rush just may pack up his megadittoes and leave.
In New York, that would very likely take him to WOR, which would create the biggest shakeup in city talk radio since WOR scooped up Bob Grant after WABC fired him in 1995.
Limbaugh’s contract with WABC expires at the end of the year.
Lew Dickey, the CEO of WABC parent company Cumulus, has said Limbaugh’s controversial comments have diminished ad revenue for the past year — and the slump remains a “residual hangover” for the station.
But the rift blew open over the weekend when a source close to Limbaugh told the Daily News: “Lew needs someone to blame, (so) he’s pointing fingers instead of fixing his own sales problem.”
SMITH, BRYAN,, FREELANCE
The microphone Sliwa uses when doing morning radio show. Curtis Sliwa's WABC Studio where he does his morning radio show, 2 Penn Plaza. Original Filename: 7-23-04Sliwa02.JPG
The roots of this simmering dispute go back to February 2012, when Limbaugh called law student Sandra Fluke a “slut” after she pressed Washington lawmakers to mandate insurance coverage of birth control.
Media Matters and other progressive groups called for advertisers to drop Limbaugh’s show — and several hundred, including Sears, Geico, John Deere, Netflix, Capitol One and the New York Lottery, did, the group said.
Limbaugh has said the departees were replaced, and a source close to the show said revenue was “very minimally impacted in the short term.”
Dickey, however, told analysts that fallout from the Fluke controversy cost Cumulus “a couple of million” in the first quarter of 2012 and “a couple of million” in the second quarter.
Overall, Cumulus was “hit pretty hard by this,” he said. Company revenue for that period fell 3.5% and Dickey estimated 1% was due to Rush.
Talk radio has suffered from a serious ad slump since the recession began in 2008. But WABC has opened a substantial lead in recent years over its primary news/talk rival in New York, WOR. In the latest Arbitron ratings, WABC averaged 2.8% of the audience to 1.2% for WOR.
Read more: http://www.nydailynews.com/entertainment/rush-limbaugh-don-blame-article-1.1335773#ixzz2SVqpWcqt
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