Everywhere I turn it seems Rush Limbaugh is. Much as I try and avoid the inanity, he is everywhere. Say for instance even today, I was reading an article about Michael J. Fox and Parkinsons’s disease, and wouldn’t you know it…
Fox writes in Always Looking Up of getting painted with the crude brush of U.S. political discourse. In the summer of 2006, he was appalled to see George W. Bush exercise the first veto of his presidency to kill a bill that would have permitted funding for embryonic stem-cell research.
Vowing it wouldn’t happen again, Fox turned his office into the headquarters of a co-ordinated effort that promised to throw its weight behind any candidate in that fall’s midterm elections – Democrat or Republican, House member or Senate hopeful – who supported the research. He appeared at rallies, raised funds and filmed commercials for candidates. And then, in mid-October, Rush Limbaugh attacked Fox for an ad made on behalf of a Democratic candidate in which the right-wing radio host said Fox was “exaggerating the effects of the disease.” For good measure, Limbaugh even imitated Fox’s dyskinisias, rolling from side to side and waving his arms in the air, and added, “It’s purely an act.”
In short order, Limbaugh had his ass handed to him on a plate, as experts and Parkinson’s patients scolded him for his ignorance. And Fox was given the platform of a lengthy interview with Katie Couric on the CBS Evening News in which he kept to the high road, helping to move attention from Limbaugh and himself to open up a broader debate about stem-cell research.
“It almost in a way lightened the moment for me, because I kind of went: ‘Oh, is it this predictable, is it this cartoonish, that you have to dehumanize the messenger?’ ” Fox recalls with a kind of glee. “And then it became this wonderful thing, because there was something karmic about the fact that the conversation got hijacked, and they spent the last two weeks [of the campaign] talking about.
Who would have expected Rush Limbaugh to become a national figure and the “official opposition” to the Obama administration? Garnering more attention than the Republican party’s actual leadership? As Rush himself says on his website:
“There is a ‘consensus’ among the American people, who have made this the most listened to program, that it is also the most accurate, most right, and most correct. People who disagree with this are Rush Deniers.”
Really? What’s interesting is that Limbaugh’s ‘dirty little secret’ is becoming public, namely that he is not quite as ‘in demand’ as many would have you believe.
That’s obviously not it. OK, so why IS his show so “popular?” Why do hundreds of stations around the country carry his show, the most widely syndicated talkfest in the country?
Glad you asked.
The real story is not generally well-known. The only reason I know is through my covering the business of radio for years for several major daily newspapers and also, for industry trade magazines like Radio World.
It’s because — ready for this? — Rush’s show was, and presumably still is, given away for free to many local radio stations.
This shocker is because of a little-known practice in broadcast syndication called a “barter deal.” (Barter deals were briefly mentioned in Michael Wolff’s first-rate recent piece on Rush in Vanity Fair).
Here’s how a barter deal works: To launch the show, Limbaugh’s syndicator, Premiere Radio Networks — the same folks who syndicate wingnut du jour Glen Beck — gave Limbaugh’s three hours away — that’s right, no cash — to local radio stations, mostly in medium and smaller markets, back in the early 1990’s.
So, a local talk station got Rush’s show for zilch. In exchange, Premiere took for itself much of the local station’s available advertising time (roughly 15 minutes an hour) and packed the show with national ads it had already pre-sold.
Well, well, well – that explains a lot. And of course – Rush is on one side of the Republican civil war brewing…
But I guess this begs the question, are we making Rush relevant by paying him attention like others publicitiy whores in his brethren?
I think so.
(cross posted at kickin it with cg)
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