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Rushbo enters brave new world
A very well-written article that puts a lot of things in perspective...
http://www.miamiherald.com/2012/03/07/2681534/rush-enters-brave-new-world-of.html
Texas-based Clear Channel, the company that would become Limbaugh’s home, took advantage of broadcast deregulation under the new president, Bill Clinton, and started buying up stations across the country.
They bought small, struggling AMs that couldn’t compete with more powerful FM signals — sometimes two or more in one market. They vacuumed up individual radio and TV stations and clusters and entire media companies. They even started a concert company, LiveNation, later sold. By the time the Supreme Court decided Bush v. Gore, Clear Channel owned more than 1,100 radio stations, almost two dozen television stations and some 700,000 outdoor billboards worldwide.
For Limbaugh, and his advertisers, it meant a guaranteed national audience — his mythic (though likely mythical) 20 million listeners. Clear Channel owned the product, the syndicator — Premiere Radio Networks — and the distribution outlets. They were literally selling programming to themselves. It was a brilliant business model that by 2006 attracted a buyer: none other than Mitt Romney’s old company, Bain Capital, and Thomas Lee Partners. Two years later, Rush signed an eight-year, $400 million contract that reportedly includes a stake in the ad revenue.
And what Rush offered the traveling salesman, the truck driver, the working stiff faithfully tuning in as the decades rolled by, was a straightforward message: “They think they’re better than you.” The black family moving into a bigger house than you could afford. The immigrant whose kid got into a better school than yours did. The women too “liberated” to give you the time of day or who have been brainwashed by the Hollywood elite to believe they’re too good to stay home and raise your children. The pointy-heads sneering at your Christianity by teaching evolution in public school. The unions, the gays, and the “gals” who run to human resources over a harmless pat on the fanny. They all think they’re better than you. But I know we’re better than them.
Read more here: http://www.miamiherald.com/2012/03/07/2681534/rush-enters-brave-new-world-of.html#storylink=cpy
They bought small, struggling AMs that couldn’t compete with more powerful FM signals — sometimes two or more in one market. They vacuumed up individual radio and TV stations and clusters and entire media companies. They even started a concert company, LiveNation, later sold. By the time the Supreme Court decided Bush v. Gore, Clear Channel owned more than 1,100 radio stations, almost two dozen television stations and some 700,000 outdoor billboards worldwide.
For Limbaugh, and his advertisers, it meant a guaranteed national audience — his mythic (though likely mythical) 20 million listeners. Clear Channel owned the product, the syndicator — Premiere Radio Networks — and the distribution outlets. They were literally selling programming to themselves. It was a brilliant business model that by 2006 attracted a buyer: none other than Mitt Romney’s old company, Bain Capital, and Thomas Lee Partners. Two years later, Rush signed an eight-year, $400 million contract that reportedly includes a stake in the ad revenue.
And what Rush offered the traveling salesman, the truck driver, the working stiff faithfully tuning in as the decades rolled by, was a straightforward message: “They think they’re better than you.” The black family moving into a bigger house than you could afford. The immigrant whose kid got into a better school than yours did. The women too “liberated” to give you the time of day or who have been brainwashed by the Hollywood elite to believe they’re too good to stay home and raise your children. The pointy-heads sneering at your Christianity by teaching evolution in public school. The unions, the gays, and the “gals” who run to human resources over a harmless pat on the fanny. They all think they’re better than you. But I know we’re better than them.
Read more here: http://www.miamiherald.com/2012/03/07/2681534/rush-enters-brave-new-world-of.html#storylink=cpy
Discuss...
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