Rush Lickballs Audience Size

[maseman]

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/29562988

This is a pretty good read.

I have worked in radio for years. Yes it is tough to piece together a national audience size because it is impossible to track every station down to the hour and when they carry the program. Plus some stations re-run his program and in addition some pre-empt it due to sports, etc.

I will say this. Never trust anything Michael Harrison says. He is by far the right-wing talking head on promoting right-wing radio. His publication, Talkers Magazine, is 100% supported by the right-wing shows through advertising. HE is a hack and a shill. He basically makes up ratings and audience size info yet he is the most quoted person about Talk Radio on all the news programs. The guy is an idiot.

[Pab Sungenis]

1. Quick lesson on how to inflate your listener numbers, for the unintiated.

Radio counts listeners in quarter hour increments. There are two ways of measuring them: "cume" and "average quarter hours" (AQH). They're just what they sound like: total number of quarter-hours listened and average listeners in a quarter hour.

The numbers put out by people like Rush are weekly cume. The trick with cume is that if you listen for 15 minutes, you're one listener. Listen for a half hour, you're two. The full hour, four, and so on.

If most of Rush's listeners join his show at the top and listen to all three hours, each of those people counts as 12 listeners every day. If they listen all week long, then each of those people counts as 60 listeners.

See how quickly numbers get inflated?

Even without factoring in "Best of Rush" and weekend/overnight replays, the real number of people actually listening to Rush (if you buy his 20 million argument, which was at his PEAK, not necessarily now) is closer to 350,000 to half a million people. Out of a country of 350 million.

In other words, only one one tenth of one percent of the population of the United States listens to Rush Limbaugh.

(ET correct math.)

[FreakinDJ]

3. The guy next door listened to Rush - "He lost his house"

and the new couple that moved in don't listen to Rush

Is there a message in that - You bet ya

[maseman]

4. Sorry but that is incorrect

A cume listener to a radio station is only counted once. That person only needs to listen to 5 minutes to be counted as a listen. That person could listen to 30 hours of radio in a week. They are only counted once. Kind of like a person at a baseball game. The ticket taker only counts you once no matter how many times you get up out of your seat.

[goclark]

2. You are on to something

Based on the number of people that voted, it is amazing that his radio numbers are high at all.

How close are his numbers compared to the votes the republicans received?
The numbers should have dropped since before the election.

The same for Fox Noise.

[maseman]

5. His listeners have nothing to do with voters

Rush's audience is always about the same size. Has been for years. It is a certain block of people who like his schtick and they will tune-in regardless of what a vote is in an election.

He may get a bigger bounce now as the right will rally against Obama but overall his audience will remain about the same size.

[goclark]

6. Are there any others that have a bigger audience than Rush?

[maseman]

7. Conservative talkers? No.

[goclark]

8. Since RushPalinMcCain and the rest are Gifts that Keep On/

Giving~ let it roll!