For those of you who HATE Rush this might help you...

[maseman]

I work in the radio business. Because of our copyright laws of research of Arbitron I cannot post ratings or any kind of rankings. But I can share some thoughts on the Rush program.

He is the most listened to talk radio host int he country. He also has the most radio affiliates in the country. But overall the vast majority of people in the this country doesn't listen to talk radio and many who do never listen to Rush.

Here's an example. Rush's show is listened to by about 1.7% of New York City's population everyday. Those people on average listen for about an hour each day. So conversely about 98.3% of the New York Population DOES NOT listen to Rush on an average day. Not only that but the people who do listen only listen for one-third of his entire daily show.

Rush is more a force in his own mind. We pay attention to him because he is the 180 from us and we're all political junkies. But in the grand scheme of things he really is just impacting a very small part of the spectrum.

[Xipe Totec]

1. Rush is a farce to be reckoned with? n/t

[rcrush]

2. And a US Rep goes on his show and grovels

[TheCowsCameHome]

14. Reps. Cantor and Gingrey gave him hearty BJ's on-air today.

They think their futures are tied to Rush.

But they won't be good..................

[Fla Dem]

39. Yes, that's why he is effective. His base is very reactionary and they

complain to their congress people, sponsors and newspapers in a much greater proportion than the rest of the country. A congressperson gets bombarded with 500-1000 negative calls and zero calls praising him because of what he said, they will sit up and take notice.

[Turbineguy]

3. OK. 1.7 percent.

That's less than the 2.2 percent in the -2SD section on the bell curve. That's well within the "much dumber than a rock" cohort.

[daninthemoon]

4. need to let the rethugs know, cause they think he's a king maker.

[maseman]

5. Maybe it is better they keep thinking they are

important. I mean come on.

Coupled with my OP, the people who listen to Rush stay constant. No matter what he says or does they'll think and vote the same way. So he's beating a dead horse. After 20 plus years spewing his shit the only new people listening are only replacing the old farts who kick off occasionally.

[Howardx]

the DU obsession with limbaugh is pathetic

its over, we won. no need to keep worrying about what that fat fuck rush is talking about.

[creeksneakers2]

10. Were you around to see what he did to Bill Clinton?

He's dying to destroy Obama and he still has an army of flying monkeys to do it with.

[maseman]

13. What HE did to Bill Clinton?

First of all Bill Clinton did to himself. He knew damn well the right had been after him since before he was even elected in 1992. He should have stopped the blowjob long enough to ask himself what the right would do if he got caught.

Second, Rush didn't impeach him. The right-wing assholes in Congress did and they would have done it with or without Rush. Rush made it into radio right-wing theatre.

[creeksneakers2]

23. That wasn't until '98 and it was way overblown (pun?)

Filegate, White Water, and thousands of lies on top of that. Bill brought none of that on himself.

Nothing of the kind would have happened without Limbaugh inflaming the public.

[Howardx]

15. he has nothing

he is the spokesman for a tiny band of deadenders, his reach and audience numbers are continually overstated here.

[razors edge]

16. Bill did more to Bill

than the junkie could have ever wished to do. IMHO.

[Howardx]

18. exactly

call a spade a spade, clinton cared more about getting blown than the country.

[razors edge]

25. I think he cared more about the country

than any of his predecessors since LBJ, (in LBJ's weird special way) except Carter, of course.

But he definately cared more about the laddies than he did about the party, or his legacy.

I can respect that in a way, I'm sure he got what he wanted from his girlfriends more often than he did from his Democratic colleges.

[Howardx]

29. the president needs to be a bigger man

not someone hooked on instant gratification.

[razors edge]

36. I know what you mean.

I rank adulterers just a step or two above child molesters. They both break up families that they claimed they wanted to be a part of.

[Howardx]

37. i look at it this way

if clinton had been a private citizen at the time its none of my business if he wanted to cheat but as president his cheating became all american's concern.

[razors edge]

41. Wasn't that ultimately Hillary's decision?

Or should we hold her accountable for her not divorcing him, or maybe we pass a law to divorce them regardless of what they want because we own them, sort of.

Just to be fair, all city councilmen need to be given polygraphs, you can't be too safe on this issue, now can you?

Would we ever get anything done in this country with that approach?

[creeksneakers2]

26. How enlightening to find out

That we can judge all of what someone is by one flaw. I'm sure Bill didn't think he'd get caught. I know the blow job didn't seriously hurt the country.

[Howardx]

28. "the blow job didn't seriously hurt the country."

interesting. i completely disagree with your assertion. the blowjob is directly responsible for bush's reign imo. it SERIOUSLY undermined gore's chances in that election. had the blowjob never happened gore would have been president.

[Howardx]

30. ps

i voted for the guy twice.

[creeksneakers2]

33. What exit polling showed that?

I remember Gore was trashed by the right wing media and the mainstream media fell into harmony. Inventing the Internet, all that stuff hurt Gore far more than Bill Clinton's blow job. Ralph Nader did 20 times the damage of the blow job.

[Howardx]

35. again we disagree

the well was poisoned long before the media decided to trash gore.

[lonestarnot]

6. bushitler sure love to kiss the boils on his ass though.

[remedy1]

7. Maseman...

Thank you for putting it into perspective.

The fact is, as you point out, most people in this country could care less about Limbaugh.

He is a legend only in his own mind. And Clear Channel got screwed. The Junkie is laughing all the way to the bank.

[creeksneakers2]

8. Rush is the drive shaft of the vast right wing conspiracy

The stuff he says is taken as fact by 30% of the population. What he says spreads. Some of them get it elsewhere but he's the king of propaganda. The proportion who listen to them must be higher in places other than New York.

Rush is responsible for polarizing our electorate.

Rush is responsible for spreading hatred and lies.

Rush produces mass uproars that have frightened the media and anyone else who might tell the truth into silence. He's used that fear to create an eight year witch hunt against Bill Clinton that wound up in a sleazy impeachment. Not going along? What do you have to hide?

He's used fear to keep anyone important from calling the WMD and Iraq lies out before the war. Disagree and you're a traitor and friend of Saddam. He's made powerful people apologize for telling the truth. He made a Congressman come on his show today to apologize and grovel because the Congressman didn't pay full tribute.

He uses his lies to infiltrate the mainstream media with right wing propaganda. He turned the press into a bunch of cowards who said whatever he wanted said.

Up until this month, he and his kind have had control of the country and moved as quickly as he could toward a fascist state.

The man is still very dangerous and I'm overjoyed that Democrats are finally confronting him. He's a punk and when he gets hit back he'll cry and run like a bully always does.

[maseman]

12. I could not disagree with you more

1. You say the stuff he says is taken by fact by 30% of the population? Please. You have no proof and that doesn't even begin to make sense. Some markets have a higher proportion of listening and other have lower. LA has something like .9% of the population tunes in daily and listenes an average of 45 minutes.

2. Yes he polarizes the electorate AND he is responsible for hatred and lies. There I agree with you. But his listeners would either listen to him or one of the other 20 conservative talk show hosts.

3. Mass uproars? Truth into silence? Please. I will say that the vast right-wing owenership of media contributes to the silence and muted media to report the truth but Rush is not the issue. He can bloviate but with such few in this country paying attention to him he doesn't matter.

4. Karl Rove was much more into putting out propoganda to the media and infiltrating the media. He is teh one we should be scared of.

5. He's only dangerous if you listen to him. I would never give the gas-bag enough credit to be affraid of him. I think the Dems should ignore him.

[creeksneakers2]

31. 1. The listeners talk to friends and family

I know its 30% because I've been following his show and politics since 1990. Rush will tell a lie and a few days later its all over the place. Polling on the lies show 30% believe them.

2. The twenty other conservative talk show hosts are clones of Rush. Rush was the original big audience lying hatemonger. All the others came from him.

3. Yes, mass uproars. For example, when Dick Durbin commented on the floor about torture and Guantanamo, the uproar led to feeding frenzy media coverage of Limbaugh's lies the Durbin accused US troops of torture. Durbin was forced to apologize. If you follow the show like I do, you'd see how much impact he has by inflaming. He had a major impact like that about once a week until Obama finally started responding right away to the right wing smears.

4. Limbaugh had the media under control since '90. Long before Karl Rove. Karl Rove got away with what he did because he could count on the right wing media to control the debate and what was said.

5. He's not dangerous because I listen to him. He's dangerous because millions of idiots listen to him.

[Howardx]

17. unlike you i dont need a boogeyman

he is a radio entertainer, nothing more.

[creeksneakers2]

34. Why would I need him?

Entertainer? He's a propagandist.

[Howardx]

38. he is certainly a propagandist

but a very poor one. notice the 0 amount of influence he had on the last election.

[Lint Head]

9. Isn't Rush Limbaugh a pedophile?

I heard he was caught with Viagra returning from the Dominican Republic. That's a place pedophiles go to have sex with children.
:dem:

[Fire_Medic_Dave]

11. Not to defend him.

It's also a place cigar smokers go to smoke and play golf. I have several friends that have gone. The Dominican Republic makes most of the non-Cuban handmade cigars sold in the world. I have no idea why Rush went but not all people who travel to the DR are pedophiles.

David

[lonestarnot]

19. Wha?

[razors edge]

20. That makes sense,

except the part about the viagra.

Maybe their par fives are six hundred yards and he just needed the long wood.

[hunter]

42. "Smoke and play golf..." so is that what he calls it???

Rush Limbaugh went to the Dominican Republic to smoke an play golf...

...heh, heh, heh, if you know what I mean...

:blush:

[KharmaTrain]

21. Cume Vs. TSL...

Thank you for your post. I've tried to bring this out in the past...and to question the numbers people throw around. Today I heard someone claim Rushbo had 20 million listeners daily. That's total bullshit. But then I worked with ratings and know how these games are played. Now he could reach 20 million possible listeners (due to all those stations) but that doesn't mean their listening.

The other game that's played here is using cumulative or Cume ratings vs. TSL or "Time Spent Listening"...the difference between someone looking in your store window (cume) an actually coming in to buy something (TSL). Cume usually is compiled on a weekly basis...thus Rusbho's 20 million (again I seriously doubt even that cume) would mean only 4 million listeners per day (again I doubt that many). I remember about a decade ago seeing Rushbo's cume at around 6 million...not 20...and the TSL was around 1 million...PER WEEK...that's about 200,000 listeners per day. That sound more like it.

As the old saying goes statisic lie and liars use statistics. They claim Rushbo as being the "most popular radio host" in the country, yet fail to mention how many listners radio has lost over the past decade.

Cheers...

[Howardx]

24. thanks

my point exactly.

[razors edge]

22. I first heard of Limballs in 1986 or so.

My boss, a former AF SAC missile base commander, would listen to him at work in Tampa.

I was pretty fresh out of the Marines and wasn't into politics, but he never seemed to me like a very smart person on the topics, very one sided and dismissive of others.

At least he stayed true to his humble beginnings.

[TheCowsCameHome]

27. That fat gasbag makes Blago look normal.

Limbaugh is in his last throes.

[Dappleganger]

32. Rush became popular because of Clinton

Rush thrives on scandalous news and shock-factor topics. He relates to the lowest common denominator within the right-wing. A lot of RW people I know think he's ridiculous, rude, a pompous ass and on the fringe of society.

However, IMO RW people see him as more a leader now because there is such a huge vacuum of real leadership within the republican party, that they are looking to whomever is saying their message the loudest at this time. If this keeps up, they are going to lose even worse in two years because they still haven't gotten their shit together.

[MrMickeysMom]

40. Now, the next question...

Would bringing the fairness doctrine back into rule level the playing field on the big signals out there in radio land, and THEN would we get a fair assessment of who likes to listen to whom?