of the media start injecting some sanity in commentary and reporting. They all have gotten away with half truths, outright fabrications, and bigotry for too long.

to beg forgiveness to maybe get some sponsors back.

Actually, nah, I don't want him to get a second chance. I just want to see the idiotic blob of worthless protoplasm humiliate himself in public the way he's humiliated so many people on the airwaves over the years.

"Win the argument, lose the customer." Conservative $ is just as good as ours. Shouldn't let customers know where your political convictions reside.

So what are you saying?

These folks all love to extoll the virtues of the free market. Let it work!

where their political convictions reside. They did that when they chose to advertise on Limbaugh's show. Fuck 'em.

Except that Republicans like to have sex too. Perhaps you missed this but what Rush was doing was trying to shame women from having sex. Probably because of his own sexual inadequacies, but whatever.

Why do you think advertisers are leaving? Not because they have some altruistic motive about what Rush said, he has said shit just as bad in the past. No they are leaving because they are being overwhelmed and see a LOSS OF INCOME should they stay.

Get a clue.

Is a great way to doom a company. You make one side mad enough, then you lose them. You apologize to the ones you made mad, you lose the other side.

There is a reason why you don't, in polite company, discuss religion and politics. It's because people's opinions are typically very strong and all it does is divide them.

I don't believe his audience share is that high, or that it ever was.

I Googled for some answers, and found wildly varying, non-scientific information. The Media Matters article is informative:

http://mediamatters.org/columns/200903090031

Once they switched in 2007 to actually tracking what people listen to rather than giving listeners diaries to jot down what they remember, Rush's ratings plummeted. And not just Rush, all talk ratings did -- this was part of why Howard moved to satellite. People listen to music but remember talk.

I think some of this advertiser exodus is some pissed off advertisers taking some cover for finally acting on what everybody has known for half a decade. As somebody who likes talk radio, that's worrying; as somebody who hates Rush, that's awesome.

The only "talk radio" I listen to is NPR.

But it seems to me that time listening is not everything.

If people remember talk, perhaps it is because they are devoting more attention to it than they do music programming.

For a lot of people, music is just "background noise". They are not actively engaged in the message. But talk radio is clearly different if people are remembering it disproportionately to the time they spend listening to it.

As an advertiser, it might be beneficial to have your message played during times when listeners are more actively engaged in listening, even if the time listened is less.

In fact, this might make such short-duration listening times even more valuable as you can sell them as spots with very engaged audiences who have been shown to remember what they hear during that time.

Not surprising to me. It's a simple equation... there are more potential consumers in the non-dittohead population. As Jon Stewart said... Limbaugh's show will soon be dealing solely with the gold sheisters (dittoheads are among the few who are gullible enough to buy their line of BS).

And I believe we just might have had it up to here.

What I heard wasn't an apology at all, just an acknowledgment that two of the words he used were inappropriate. But that doesn't even scratch the surface of his offensive attack on that young woman.

Well it seems he's riled up enough women and the men who support them, that for once it isn't blowing over.

Hallelujah!

After cigarette advertising was banned in the UK the tobacco companies reported a rise in profits. It turns out that the advertising didn't actually do a great deal to improve brand recognition but it did cost them a lot of money. Many companies would have liked to stop advertising earlier, but like a screwed up arms race, they couldn't stop running adverts whilst their competitors still ran them.

Do brands like Coke and Pepsi need to advertise? They're two of the most recognisable brand names on the planet, do they actually derive any real benefits from advertising or do they only keep up their advertising levels because their main competitor does the same?

There are companies running adverts who simply do not need advertising. Citrix is a good example. Being in the UK I've not heard Limbaugh's show so I was surprised to hear that Citrix had pulled their adverts from his show. Citrix is a company that everyone who works in IT knows, they simply do not have to advertise to people listening to a radio show to tell people what they do - anyone looking at an IT project that involves virtualisation already knows of them and what they offer. Targeted adverts on tech websites would make sense but a generic radio show? They've quite possibly realised that they weren't getting any benefits from their adverts prior to this incident but needed a good reason to pull their adverts that didn't leave them looking like idiots for placing the adverts during a radio show in the first place.

where there is less regulation (that's less an advertsising strategy than a marketing strategy). They were doing a great business last I heard.

As for advertising in general, consider that a lot of it is aimed not just at potential customers but at current customers at an attempt to sustain/build brand loyalty. Much is also for the benefit of the distribution chain -- wholesalers & retailers -- who feel more confident about selling brands that are promoted. Advertising also ensures investors the company is sound and/or a major player in its industry.

There are many products that have a very limited market, and Citrix is one of them. 99 percent of all dittoheads will never need Citrix for anything, and the 200 dittoheads that need something Citrix makes are already Citrix customers.

Another weird one: another advertiser that dropped Limbaugh is Reputation Rhino, whose business seems to revolve around writing reviews of companies to put on social media sites.

Here's a link:
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/pub?key=0AgDYUq_uYNSgdE42ZklyQ2ZSNWR2MjBvUXJrTFUzd3c&single=true&gid=2&output=html
I started calling the ones with phone numbers. Very interesting. Different responses, from people just hanging up on me (I was unfailingly polite) to just busy, to statements that they had decided to drop Rush.
I tried to make three points:
1) this isn't the first time Rush has been incredibly hostile to women
2) it doesn't help their company to be associated with him
3) please don't ever go back to advertising with him.
By the way the list at the link is not at all complete. Contact information is missing for many, and some have dropped Rush, but are still on the active sponsor list.

I also make the point that he has said horribly racist things, too, to let them know that more than one segment of their customers have been attacked by him.

...before the market forces turned against him.

Companies are being to understand just how much purchasing power women have and I dont think it's a demographic they want to piss off.

Rush hates women and I do believe most women, conservative, moderates and liberals either do not like rush or completely hate him.

I have never heard a woman talk about how much they enjoyed Rush Limbaugh's program even conservative women. I think he repels women in general.

non-stop in their office, a public area where students and all members of the Dept. have access.

Or, they *used* to listen to him at full volume....until I complained to the chair of the diversity committee. (at that time, complaining to the chair of our dept. was unwise, since he was a huge christian conservative repub.)

Now they listen to it, but turned way down. I do NOT understand....I did ask one of them about it once, how could she stand it....she said she loves it. I don't know, didn't make much sense to me.

But he has gone through this before--just not as severe. One of the posters yesterday stated that the advertisers may just be laying-low till this blows over--only to come back later.

But maybe, just maybe, this is the last straw for this filthy pig who has a small penis and matching size brain.

The thing that is fueling this is the fact that its staying in the news cycle. The more attention it gets, the more the rats jump ship.