Limbaugh stink turns off advertisers, for now...
Limbaugh Advertisers Flee Show Amid Storm
[image source: Mother Jones]
By BRIAN STELTER Published: March 4, 2012
Source: The New York Times
[*OP edits: There, I fixed that for you.]
Emboldened by Rush Limbaugh’s public [faux]*apology over the weekend to a law school student whom he had called a “slut” and a “prostitute,” critics of the radio talk show host are intensifying their online campaign against his advertisers.
The apology, they said, was a signal that the campaign was working. On Sunday, a seventh company, ProFlowers, said that it was suspending all of its advertising on “The Rush Limbaugh Show” despite his [faux]*apologetic statement a day earlier.
For now, the ad boycott is uncomfortable but not crippling for Mr. Limbaugh, who is estimated to make $50 million a year and whose program is a profit center for Premiere Radio Networks, the company that syndicates it. The program makes money both through ads and through fees paid by local radio stations, and while it often has sparked outrage during more than two decades on the air, efforts at ad boycotts in the past have had no measurable effect. Liberal groups and activists, however, hope that this time is different.
Mr. Limbaugh has been roundly criticized for talking at length about the sex life of Sandra Fluke, a Georgetown University law student who testified in support of the Obama administration’s requirement that health insurance plans cover contraceptives for women. For three straight days he lambasted her, before saying in a statement Saturday afternoon that he did not intend to attack her personally. “I chose the wrong words in my analogy of the situation,” he said.
By the time he apologized, online protesters had been organizing for days on social networking Web sites and liberal hubs like Daily Kos. They called on companies like ProFlowers to remove their ads from “The Rush Limbaugh Show” and appeared to be having some success, as companies like Sleep Train said they had suspended advertising.
One such company that had been a longtime sponsor of Mr. Limbaugh’s, Carbonite, said it would reconsider its ad spending; after the apology was issued, it announced that it would suspend its ads anyway. “We hope that our action, along with the other advertisers who have already withdrawn their ads, will ultimately contribute to a more civilized public discourse,” the company’s chief executive, David Friend, said.
Mr. Limbaugh’s critics dismissed his apology as having been forced by the advertiser pressure. Reflecting those feelings on NBC’s “Meet the Press” on Sunday, Representative Debbie Wasserman Schultz of Florida, the Democratic National Committee chairwoman, said, “I know he apologized, but forgive me, I doubt his sincerity, given that he lost at least six advertisers.”
Eric Boehlert of the liberal media monitoring group Media Matters for America predicted on Sunday that the apology would not “stop the pressure that’s being applied to his advertisers.”
“His comments were so egregious, naturally advertisers will have doubts about being associated with Limbaugh’s brand of hate,” Mr. Boehlert said in an e-mail message.
Premiere’s parent company, Clear Channel, deferred questions to Premiere, which declined to answer questions about the effect of the ad boycott or the widespread anger at Mr. Limbaugh
In a statement, Premiere - best known for conservative talk shows - said it was committed to giving listeners access to a broad range of opinion and commentary. “The contraception debate is one that sparks strong emotion and opinions on both sides of the issue,” the company said. “We respect the right of Mr. Limbaugh, as well as the rights of those who disagree with him, to express those opinions.”
It has not been easy for Mr. Limbaugh’s opponents to figure out all of his show’s sponsors: several lists, some inaccurate, are floating around the Web. Mr. Limbaugh’s own Web site appeared to have no actual advertisers on Sunday, only ads for its own online store of products. [OP edit: Are the advertisers not wanting to be known?]
Limbaugh’s noon to 3 p.m. show is the single most popular conservative talk show in the country.
Monday’s show will be Mr. Limbaugh’s first chance to address the advertiser dust-up, since they were just beginning to withdraw when his show was in progress on Friday. The complaints are coming from some of the same liberal activists who persuaded advertisers to boycott Glenn Beck’s television show on Fox News in 2009 after Mr. Beck called President Obama a racist. Hundreds of companies eventually asked Fox to keep their ads off Mr. Beck’s show, and the show ended last year.
The company that withdrew on Sunday, ProFlowers, had been inundated with angry Twitter messages from opponents of Mr. Limbaugh. In a statement, it said, “We do not base our advertising decisions to align with any particular political view or opinion, as our employees and customers are as diverse as the U.S.A. Mr. Limbaugh’s recent comments went beyond political discourse to a personal attack and do not reflect our values as a company.”
For the most part, the other advertisers involved have also stuck to scripts that distance themselves from Mr. Limbaugh’s comments - betting, it would appear, that short statements will suffice.
Quicken Loans and Citrix, a maker of Internet software, are among the companies that have announced, on Facebook and Twitter, the removal of ads from Mr. Limbaugh’s show.
When another company, LegalZoom, a seller of online legal document services, was asked for further comment on Sunday, a spokesman sent along a statement that read, “LegalZoom has decided to terminate all current and future advertising with ‘The Rush Limbaugh Show,’ effective immediately. Our company does not in any way support or endorse the recent comments of Mr. Limbaugh.”
Later that day, a LegalZoom executive accidentally copied a reporter on an e-mail to her colleagues. It read, “We may need to prepare additional Q.& A.’s if this situation does not settle down soon.”
Oh... and Breaking...Breaking: Levin says Limbaugh should be dropped from Armed Forces Network
(CNN) - Sen. Carl Levin, the powerful chairman of the Armed Services Committee, said Wednesday he would like the Armed Forces Network to drop the controversial Rush Limbaugh program from its service that provides radio and television shows to U.S. service members around the world.
"I would hope the people that run it see just how offensive this is and drop it on their own volition," Levin told CNN in an exclusive interview in the Capitol
Levin's comments come in the wake of a widening uproar over Limbaugh's characterization of a young female law student as a "slut" and a "prostitute" for advocating insurance coverage of contraceptives.
The Pentagon said Monday the Defense Department currently has no plans to stop broadcasting the show. DOD's policy is to broadcast shows that "reflect a wide range" of opinion, said Pentagon press secretary George Little.
Levin, a generally liberal Democrat from Michigan whose top spot on Armed Services makes him very influential inside the Pentagon, said he would "love" to see the program dropped, but he doesn't think it should be up to Congress to pass a law to make it happen.
"I think that is probably an issue that should be left to the folks that run that network," he said. "In other words, I'd love to see them drop it but I don't think I'd legislate it."
The liberal leaning advocacy group Vote Vets and other progressive voices in the blogosphere have called for the AFN to drop Limbaugh's program.
Levin said he was "delighted" so many advertisers had pulled their commercials from the program.
[image source: Mother Jones]
By BRIAN STELTER Published: March 4, 2012
Source: The New York Times
[*OP edits: There, I fixed that for you.]
Emboldened by Rush Limbaugh’s public [faux]*apology over the weekend to a law school student whom he had called a “slut” and a “prostitute,” critics of the radio talk show host are intensifying their online campaign against his advertisers.
The apology, they said, was a signal that the campaign was working. On Sunday, a seventh company, ProFlowers, said that it was suspending all of its advertising on “The Rush Limbaugh Show” despite his [faux]*apologetic statement a day earlier.
For now, the ad boycott is uncomfortable but not crippling for Mr. Limbaugh, who is estimated to make $50 million a year and whose program is a profit center for Premiere Radio Networks, the company that syndicates it. The program makes money both through ads and through fees paid by local radio stations, and while it often has sparked outrage during more than two decades on the air, efforts at ad boycotts in the past have had no measurable effect. Liberal groups and activists, however, hope that this time is different.
Mr. Limbaugh has been roundly criticized for talking at length about the sex life of Sandra Fluke, a Georgetown University law student who testified in support of the Obama administration’s requirement that health insurance plans cover contraceptives for women. For three straight days he lambasted her, before saying in a statement Saturday afternoon that he did not intend to attack her personally. “I chose the wrong words in my analogy of the situation,” he said.
By the time he apologized, online protesters had been organizing for days on social networking Web sites and liberal hubs like Daily Kos. They called on companies like ProFlowers to remove their ads from “The Rush Limbaugh Show” and appeared to be having some success, as companies like Sleep Train said they had suspended advertising.
One such company that had been a longtime sponsor of Mr. Limbaugh’s, Carbonite, said it would reconsider its ad spending; after the apology was issued, it announced that it would suspend its ads anyway. “We hope that our action, along with the other advertisers who have already withdrawn their ads, will ultimately contribute to a more civilized public discourse,” the company’s chief executive, David Friend, said.
Mr. Limbaugh’s critics dismissed his apology as having been forced by the advertiser pressure. Reflecting those feelings on NBC’s “Meet the Press” on Sunday, Representative Debbie Wasserman Schultz of Florida, the Democratic National Committee chairwoman, said, “I know he apologized, but forgive me, I doubt his sincerity, given that he lost at least six advertisers.”
Eric Boehlert of the liberal media monitoring group Media Matters for America predicted on Sunday that the apology would not “stop the pressure that’s being applied to his advertisers.”
“His comments were so egregious, naturally advertisers will have doubts about being associated with Limbaugh’s brand of hate,” Mr. Boehlert said in an e-mail message.
Premiere’s parent company, Clear Channel, deferred questions to Premiere, which declined to answer questions about the effect of the ad boycott or the widespread anger at Mr. Limbaugh
In a statement, Premiere - best known for conservative talk shows - said it was committed to giving listeners access to a broad range of opinion and commentary. “The contraception debate is one that sparks strong emotion and opinions on both sides of the issue,” the company said. “We respect the right of Mr. Limbaugh, as well as the rights of those who disagree with him, to express those opinions.”
It has not been easy for Mr. Limbaugh’s opponents to figure out all of his show’s sponsors: several lists, some inaccurate, are floating around the Web. Mr. Limbaugh’s own Web site appeared to have no actual advertisers on Sunday, only ads for its own online store of products. [OP edit: Are the advertisers not wanting to be known?]
Limbaugh’s noon to 3 p.m. show is the single most popular conservative talk show in the country.
Monday’s show will be Mr. Limbaugh’s first chance to address the advertiser dust-up, since they were just beginning to withdraw when his show was in progress on Friday. The complaints are coming from some of the same liberal activists who persuaded advertisers to boycott Glenn Beck’s television show on Fox News in 2009 after Mr. Beck called President Obama a racist. Hundreds of companies eventually asked Fox to keep their ads off Mr. Beck’s show, and the show ended last year.
The company that withdrew on Sunday, ProFlowers, had been inundated with angry Twitter messages from opponents of Mr. Limbaugh. In a statement, it said, “We do not base our advertising decisions to align with any particular political view or opinion, as our employees and customers are as diverse as the U.S.A. Mr. Limbaugh’s recent comments went beyond political discourse to a personal attack and do not reflect our values as a company.”
For the most part, the other advertisers involved have also stuck to scripts that distance themselves from Mr. Limbaugh’s comments - betting, it would appear, that short statements will suffice.
Quicken Loans and Citrix, a maker of Internet software, are among the companies that have announced, on Facebook and Twitter, the removal of ads from Mr. Limbaugh’s show.
When another company, LegalZoom, a seller of online legal document services, was asked for further comment on Sunday, a spokesman sent along a statement that read, “LegalZoom has decided to terminate all current and future advertising with ‘The Rush Limbaugh Show,’ effective immediately. Our company does not in any way support or endorse the recent comments of Mr. Limbaugh.”
Later that day, a LegalZoom executive accidentally copied a reporter on an e-mail to her colleagues. It read, “We may need to prepare additional Q.& A.’s if this situation does not settle down soon.”
Oh... and Breaking...Breaking: Levin says Limbaugh should be dropped from Armed Forces Network
(CNN) - Sen. Carl Levin, the powerful chairman of the Armed Services Committee, said Wednesday he would like the Armed Forces Network to drop the controversial Rush Limbaugh program from its service that provides radio and television shows to U.S. service members around the world.
"I would hope the people that run it see just how offensive this is and drop it on their own volition," Levin told CNN in an exclusive interview in the Capitol
Levin's comments come in the wake of a widening uproar over Limbaugh's characterization of a young female law student as a "slut" and a "prostitute" for advocating insurance coverage of contraceptives.
The Pentagon said Monday the Defense Department currently has no plans to stop broadcasting the show. DOD's policy is to broadcast shows that "reflect a wide range" of opinion, said Pentagon press secretary George Little.
Levin, a generally liberal Democrat from Michigan whose top spot on Armed Services makes him very influential inside the Pentagon, said he would "love" to see the program dropped, but he doesn't think it should be up to Congress to pass a law to make it happen.
"I think that is probably an issue that should be left to the folks that run that network," he said. "In other words, I'd love to see them drop it but I don't think I'd legislate it."
The liberal leaning advocacy group Vote Vets and other progressive voices in the blogosphere have called for the AFN to drop Limbaugh's program.
Levin said he was "delighted" so many advertisers had pulled their commercials from the program.