Rush Limbaugh Blame: Advertising Revenue Falling At WABC Radio, Limbaugh's Flagship Station

Rush Limbaugh is once again, embroiled in the middle of a controversy, but this time, it isn't about political issues. It's about money. 

Advertising revenue at his flagship radio station, WABC in New York, has been tanking, but Limbaugh insists it's not his fault. However, he added, if his boss keeps saying it is, Limbaugh just may pack up and leave.

According to the New York Daily News, 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.

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, the News reported.

But the rift blew open over the weekend when a source close to 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 Washington lawmakers to mandate insurance coverage of birth control.

According to the Daily News, 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 of 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.

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world news
Rush Limbaugh
WABC
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