http://www.nydailynews.com/entertainment...ticle-1.1335773

WABC has been going down hill for years. They lost Mark Simone earlier this year and added Geraldo in the morning slot and he stinks. I hope Limbaugh jumps. WOR is a better station since they got new management last year. I find myself listening to Rita Cosby on OR in the afternoons instead of Hannity because ABC sucks so much.

Zitat

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Rush Limbaugh people are saying it’s not El Rushbo’s fault that ad sales have fallen at his flagship WABC — and he made it clear this weekend if the network’s boss keeps declaring it is, he just may pack up his megadittoes and leave.

In New York, that would very likely take him to WOR, which would create the biggest shakeup in city talk radio since WOR scooped up Bob Grant after WABC fired him in 1995.

Limbaugh’s contract with WABC expires at the end of the year.

Lew Dickey, the CEO of WABC parent company Cumulus, has said Limbaugh’s controversial comments have diminished ad revenue for the past year — and the slump remains a “residual hangover” for the station.

But the rift blew open over the weekend when a source close to the Limbaugh told the Daily News: “Lew needs someone to blame, (so) he’s pointing fingers instead of fixing his own sales problem.”

The roots of this simmering dispute go back to February, 2012, when Limbaugh called law student Sandra Fluke a “slut” after she pressed D.C. lawmakers to mandate insurance coverage of birth control.

Media Matters and other progressive groups called for advertisers to drop Limbaugh’s show — and several hundred, including Sears, Geico, John Deere, Netflix, Capitol One and the New York Lottery, did, the group said.

Limbaugh has said the departees were replaced, and a source close to the show said revenue was “very minimally impacted in the short term.”


Dickey, however, told analysts that fallout from the Fluke controversy cost Cumulus “a couple of million” in the first quarter 2012 and “a couple of million” in the second quarter.

Overall, Cumulus was “hit pretty hard by this,” he said. Company revenue for that period fell 3.5% and Dickey estimated 1% was due to Rush.

He said last May he hoped the problem would disappear. But it hasn’t, he said.

“There has been residual hangover ... in terms of advertisers sitting out,” Dickey said in March. “Clearly that’s had an impact. ... That’s something that we are dealing with on an ongoing basis.”

Nonsense, said the source close to the Limbaugh show: “Dickey keeps complaining about falling revenue, but his stations have long lagged behind their competitors in sales by a substantial margin. Rush Limbaugh's ratings have outperformed every other program on WABC and many other Cumulus stations for years.”

Talk radio has suffered from a serious ad slump since the recession began in 2008. But WABC has opened a substantial lead in recent years over its primary news/talk rival in New York, WOR. In the latest Arbitron ratings, WABC averaged 2.8% of the audience to 1.2% for WOR.

Last year, however, WOR was purchased by radio megagiant Clear Channel, which syndicates Limbaugh’s show through its company, Premiere.

If Limbaugh leaves Cumulus, which now carries him on 40 stations in 36 markets, the source at his show confirms he would be looking for other stations in those markets.

Limbaugh began his national career on WABC in 1988, and his show is widely credited with launching the modern surge of talk radio into a major political force.

WABC, meanwhile, blossomed from a struggling talk station into a national symbol of talk radio’s staunch conservatism.

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