Rush Limbaugh Blame Game: Conservative Commentator Blamed For Cumulus Losses In Ad Revenue, Threatens To Quit Station

The Rush Limbaugh blame that is irking the conservative commentator is taking a new turn as the powerful and world-famous radio host threatens to take his show off New York’s WABC radio. He intends to move to the chief competitor station if the heads of Cumulus Radio don’t stop blaming him for driving advertisers away. Executives from the company are pointing the finger on Limbaugh after his “slut” comment on law student Sandra Fluke.

Lew Dickey, the CEO of WABC’s parent company, Cumulus, has been reported to have blamed Limbaugh’s controversial comments as the reason for declining ad revenue in the past year.

The CEO claims there was significant financial fallout from Limbaugh’s comments about the law student, who he called a “slut” last year after she pushed for legislators to mandate insurance coverage for birth control.

During that period of controversy, progressive groups claim to have pushed hundreds of advertisers out of Limbaugh’s program, including big-brand names like Sears, Geico, John Deere, Netflix, Capital One, and the New York Lottery, MailOnline reports.

But Limbaugh said each company that left was replaced, and according to a source familiar with the matter, the revenue was “very minimally impacted in the short term,” as told by the source to the Daily News.

Dickey said the controversy over Limbaugh’s comment on Fluke has cost the company a “couple of million” in the first quarter and “couple of million” in the second quarter.

Revenue of the company over that period dropped 3.5 percent and according to Dickey, roughly 1 per cent of that was “residual hangover” from what Limbaugh said.

The source who spoke to the Daily News, however, said that the CEO was only looking for someone to blame the financial problems. “Lew needs someone to blame, (so) he's pointing fingers instead of fixing his own sales problem.”

Limbaugh’s contract with WABC expires at the end of the year and if he chooses to leave the station, he would likely move his show to WOR.

In the most recent Arbitron ratings, WABC led WOR with an average of 2.8 per cent of the audience compared to WOR’s 1.2 per cent. Across the radio industry, talk radio has been going through a downward spiral because of the slump caused by the recession.