Rush Limbaugh's California Ratings Debacle

[underpants]

Great short article about the former station building giant of radio and how his numbers are dropping like a rock in big markets. It includes great analysis and refutes possible excuses from Dittoheads.

http://mediamatters.org/mobile/blog/2014/05/01/rush-limbaughs-california-ratings-debacle/199108


There's only one radio station in America that takes its name from Rush Limbaugh's radio empire and that's KEIB in Los Angeles -- the EIB mirrors Limbaugh's "Excellence in Broadcasting" motto. Clear Channel, which syndicates Limbaugh's program nationally, owns the station and flipped the call letters to KEIB in honor of him when the company announced he was leaving his longtime Los Angeles radio home, KFI, and moving to KEIB in January. There, according to Clear Channel, he would anchor a new, all-conservative lineup of Republican-friendly talkers, including Glenn Beck and Sean Hannity.

Three months later, Limbaugh's KEIB is a ratings disaster, coming in 37th place in the second largest radio market in America with a .5 rating share in March, the most recent month available, according to Nielsen ratings. (A ratings share represents the percent of those listening to radio in the market who are dialed into a particular station.)

How small is KEIB's audience? So small that eleven non-English radio stations have larger audiences in Los Angeles. And so small that KEIB actually trails four college-run, non-commercial stations in the market. This, for a man who makes $40 million a year to attract big radio audiences? As for KFI, the station Limbaugh left and which switched to an all-local news and talk format, its ratings remain healthy in the talker's absence. A top ten station, KFI boasts an audience six times larger than KEIB's.

The ratings news is almost as bad up the California coast in San Francisco. There, as in Los Angeles, Clear Channel moved Limbaugh on the AM dial, from KKSF to KNEW, and dubbed the station "The Patriot."

[Gothmog]

1. Limbaugh's audience is dying out

The average age of the Limbaugh listeners have to be in the 70s by now. Fox News is having the same issue. Soon all of the Limbaugh and Fox News audience members will be too old to turn on the radio or the tv set

[shenmue]

2. Haha!

What could suck more?

[lostincalifornia]

3. Good, I hope clear channel continues tho throw money at it until they go broke

[alp227]

4. Two of the "college radio stations" are actually NPR stations

KCRW and KPCC, both owned by local community colleges (Santa Monica College and Pasadena CC, respectively).

[SunSeeker]

5. Good. I'm pissed Clear Channel dumped Stephanie Miller for that douchebag here in L.A.

Every time I see a billboard advertising "The Patriot," I want to

If The Patriot has a .5% rating share, I am obviously not the only one who feels that way.

[Zorro]

6. Yep. You're not alone

I feel the same way. Listening to Steph during the LA morning commute was always a pleasure. No more 1150 AM for me.

[Cartoonist]

7. They gave us Glenn Beck

instead of Steph in the AM.
I will admit, I had a wonderful time listening to GB after the presidential election. I thought we were going to hear a live suicide.

[Frank Cannon]

8. The Koch brothers will subsidize him.

Rush is NEVER going away. Even when that motherfucker finally has the cardiac arrest that sends him to his dirt nap, they'll just play his archived shows through the rest of eternity.