Ratings...and that means attracting an audience. It looks like audience expert Rush Limbaugh is failing in that department these days. He and the right wing flock are supposedly upset about Stephen Colbert's taking over David Letterman's seat, but the reason Colbert is taking over is Colbert's ratings on Comedy Central. That pesky "fickle" audience again. So blame it on the type of audience, why don't ya--demographic profile has GOTTA be different.
Well, how 'bout considering the shrinking credibility demographic and you'll understand why Brian Williams got suspended and why Robin Williams' show, "The Crazy Ones", got cancelled. Oh dear--Limbaugh and Williams and Williams mentioned in the same breath--I can hear the howls from here. Nonetheless, the common denominator here is the audience, interchangeable with the term "ratings", and when you're a radio chain mogul who has blown a massive wad of moolah on a long term contract with a guy who is the radio Pied Piper of the radical right wing wacko demographic for as many years as Rush has, what the hell could possibly go wrong? Rick Unger of Forbes magazine thinks he's got it figured out, and what he says about the sponsors of Limbaugh's program is the same principle every other show sponsor goes by: how big an audience ya got?
I've said it before and I'll say it again--if a performer isn't attracting an audience, sponsors will think the performer isn't worth spending their money on, so they shouldn't act so damn surprised when they get the axe. Limbaugh hasn't gotten the axe yet but he's still bound by a contract that his boss apparently wishes he hadn't gotten into.
(Yup, I acknowledge that the articles linked to are old; it's just that word has just come down the pike that Limbaugh is moving to a smaller Chicago station from his old lavish digs, and Stephen Colbert's takeover of Letterman's show is imminent, and it's true that CBS' expectations of "The Crazy Ones" was unrealistic--we'll see if it's also true of their expectations of Colbert).
Edited to add a comment about Unger's editorial about how networks don't seek the over 50 demographic because of the diminished spending power of the close-to-retirement set. Next to nobody retires with a retirement package anymore and Social Security alone doesn't cut it. But with that demographic myopia, they're leaving out all the seniors who ARE old enough to have been part of the set who retired on a pension when everybody had one.
There's also the matter of Limbaugh's fans getting older. There may come a time where he'll have to move out of Chicago and go back to Cape Girardeau cuz that's the only place where he'll still be a celebrity. Maybe The Purple Crackle will take him in as a permanent stand-up comedian.
Interesting how the Purple Crackle is considered to be Cape history--it was founded and rose to notoriety not in Cape proper, but on the Illinois side in East Cape. It burnt down with some regularity until it moved from Illinois to Missouri...but that article I linked to recounts that history, including how it got its name--it doesn't mention that Limbaugh was a patron of the East Cape establishment, ha. He WAS. Ah, yes--it opened in 1939, so I'm going to have to add that tidbit to my post about the 1930s.
Tuesday Clarafication: The above post was written rather late at night when I was looking for the existence of other news and Baltimore was all I could find, and that would include any sort of news item online that I could link to about the news I'd just heard about Limbaugh moving his facilities to smaller, more humble digs. The old links were all I could dig up last night. By no means do I suggest that Limbaugh is somehow more important than the events in Baltimore, but I do suggest that it's not the only thing happening in the world, and that includes the superficial nods all the news entities were giving to the disaster in Nepal.
I'll now mention how surprised and relieved I was about an apparently new Facebook feature that they added apparently during the space of time that they banned me for being a fake person: people who reside in areas where there are natural disasters are now able to check in to Facebook just to announce the fact that they are safe. And it is with great relief that I found out that my friends in that area have indeed checked in as safe via this Facebook feature.
Limbaugh is originally from Cape Girardeau, and I'm intimately familiar with Cape Girardeau, as it happens...
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| Pic of a much-overhauled Dinky in Cape Girardeau's lovely Capaha Park. It didn't get the classy paint job until much later in its life, and it had jagged edges in its metal in various places yet kids could climb into and onto it at the time prior to its spruce-up. |
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| The FM radio station I used to work at, in Cape Girardeau--no longer there or in existence. KFMP. It was almost fully automated, and it's the automation system I worked on that parlayed my better job with boiler/turbine control systems at Illinois Power Company. |
Tuesday mini-UPDATE: just now caught the Baltimore presser which urged kids to still go to school as if the school was a proper replacement for parents, and the parents who kept their kids out of school clearly know that school is no substitute for parents keeping a direct eye on their kids. Baltimore, schools aren't parents so stop pretending that they are. If they were proper parental substitutes, then the last riot wouldn't have happened. FAIL
OH gimme a friggin' BREAK already, those of you who think I don't care what goes on in Baltimore even though my main issue is that it isn't the ONLY news out there, but to listen to the media entities, you'd get that impression. I'm following other situations across the globe and if it wasn't for Twitter, I wouldn't have found out about THIS very important development. You give me license to claim that you don't care about those girls on the same basis that you claim I don't care about Baltimore, you know. Nigeria is right next door to Cameroon and I have extended family there, so don't get all self-righteous about your myopia. I have an aversion to myopia.
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