Rush Limbaugh’s downward spiral continues: Another demotion, another step toward irrelevancy

The good news for Rush Limbaugh: One month after being notified he was getting dumped by his Boston talk radio host station, the talker has a new AM home in the city.

The bad news: The station currently boasts a 0.6 rating, trails four non-commercial stations in the market, and becomes yet another big-city, cellar-dwelling outpost that Limbaugh is forced to call home.

The station, WKOX, is the type of “bottom-rung” affiliate that Limbaugh was rarely associated with during his halcyon days as the king of talk radio. But those days seem to be dwindling as the Boston fall from grace has previously played out for Limbaugh in places like Los Angeles and Indianapolis. In each instance, Limbaugh exited a prosperous, longtime radio home and was forced to settle for an also-ran outlet with miniscule ratings.

Limbaugh’s ongoing major market woes can be traced to his 2012 on-air meltdown over Sandra Fluke, where he castigated and insulted the graduate student for three days on his program, calling her a “slut” and suggesting she post videos of herself having sex on the Internet. (Fluke’s sin in the eyes of Limbaugh was testifying before Congress in favor of contraception mandates for health care insurance.)

The astonishing Limbaugh monologues sparked an unprecedented advertiser exodus, which means selling his show has become a major lift for the affiliate stations that pay a hefty fee for the right to carry his program. The Wall Street Journal has reported on the millions of dollars in advertising revenue that Limbaugh’s host stations lose because of the talker’s stigma on Madison Avenue.

The still-unfolding repercussions? Some key stations want out of their Limbaugh deals. And when those deals are up, nobody else is stepping forward to ink new contracts with Rush.

http://www.salon.com/2015/06/18/rush_limbaughs_downward_spiral_continues_another_demotion_another_step_to_irrelevancy_partner/