Radio's Head Rush

-By Katy Bachman

Rush Limbaugh knows exactly what effect he has on liberals, and he relishes that power. "All it takes is the mention of my name and the predictable left-wing groups have a cow," he boasts. From the moment The Rush Limbaugh Show exploded onto radio stations 15 years ago, Limbaugh -- known to the general public simply as Rush -- has been the scourge of the liberal left. Since he is often credited (or blamed, depending on one's viewpoint) with helping Republicans gain control of Congress in 1994, the first time in 50 years, it's no wonder his harshest critics are scrambling to find a liberal counterpoint.

Limbaugh insists he didn't set out to be a political force. Since he was a 12-year-old kid in small-town Missouri, all he wanted to be was a broadcaster. The liberals, he likes to point out, have got it all wrong: to focus solely on Limbaugh's politics is to miss the reason he has spawned an explosion in political Talk across both radio and television.

"It's amusing and flattering, but [the liberal left] is violating every rule in the book," explains the 52-year-old Limbaugh. "You don't mention the competition. They are elevating me in stature every time they mention coming up with a liberal version of me. They have an image of me as a ribald conservative. I'm a salesman first and foremost."

Broadcasting three hours a day Monday through Friday out of his Palm Beach, Fla., studio, Limbaugh bonds with his audience, which today numbers an astounding 20 million a week, the biggest in radio. His daily audience of 12 million is as big as any top-rated TV show on a broadcast network and dwarfs any show delivered on cable. He's heard on 600 radio stations in every market in the U.S. Except for ABC's Paul Harvey, who broadcasts only 15 minutes daily, no other broadcast personality comes close to hitting these numbers.

The Rush brand has also become big business. Since he was first syndicated by EFM Media in 1988, his show has generated more than $1 billion in revenue for his networks and stations. Premiere Radio Networks, Clear Channel Communications' programming arm, which took over syndication of The Rush Limbaugh Show in 1998, negotiated in 2001 a record-breaking $285 million contract with Limbaugh to lock him in through 2006. He is Premiere's biggest money-maker, generating between $40 million and $50 million annually in advertising revenue, about 15 percent to 18 percent of the company's total take.

LIMBAUGH DIDN'T GET where he is today by starting a conservative groundswell. Nor did conservatives pluck him out of obscurity to become their mouthpiece -- he was fired from seven radio jobs before his career took hold. But the man who rose to national media recognition during the conservative administrations of Ronald Reagan and George Bush senior says he doesn't need any political punching bag to get ratings. "It's a non-issue who is in power," Limbaugh insists. "My success isn't determined by who wins elections. If it [were] that way, I'd be cooked. I'm not tied to a political party, but to a set of ideas."

Even with another Republican in the White House and the success of conservatives in the 2002 elections, Rush's ratings haven't wavered. In Arbitron's Spring 2003 survey, Limbaugh ranks first in eight of the top 10 radio markets. He's third in New York (WABC-AM) and fourth in Boston (WRKO-AM).

In getting to the top, Limbaugh ended up rewriting the rule book for Talk radio and national syndication. Before him, there were only a few AM stations programming local Talk radio all day, about 125 to 200 by most estimates. Today, Talk stations number more than 1,200, comprising 10 percent of all outlets.
Limbaugh shares credit for his rise with Ed McLaughlin, a former ABC Radio exec who founded EFM Media and syndicated Rush in 1988. McLaughlin's idea sounds simple today: Offer radio stations a top-notch syndicated radio personality in daytime, when most radio listeners tune in. "If the talent was good enough to be better than anything stations had locally, it could succeed," McLaughlin recalls thinking at the time.

"I started as a small entrepreneur," adds Limbaugh. "We had no money behind us. Ed and I never once surveyed the market and said, 'Oh, there's a niche there.' I just got to be me on the air, and it just grew."

McLaughlin had been looking to expand in the late 1980s. Another former ABC exec suggested McLaughlin check out a local Talk host in Sacramento, Calif. -- Limbaugh, who after spending many years spinning top 40 hits as Jeff Christie, had landed a job doing Talk on KFBK-AM.

Limbaugh's show had a four-year run on KFBK, where he developed much of the style listeners hear today. At its inception, the show was unlike anything else on the air, and it hasn't changed since. Much to the chagrin of KFBK execs, Limbaugh had no guests. He used music only to punctuate his points. Except for a few phone calls from listeners, the show was all Rush, all the time.

"I rode around Sacramento and listened to Rush while I was driving," remembers McLaughlin. "I realized I hadn't missed a beat with him. He held my attention. He was a voice that hadn't been heard. You got the feeling his listeners were saying that's what they would say if they could."

When he plucked Limbaugh from KFBK in Sacramento, times were tough for the radio business, especially AMs, which found themselves desperately seeking formats to compete with the better sound quality offered on the FM band. "Programming Talk required a lot of money," says McLaughlin, money AM stations didn't have because FM stations were stealing their lunch.

"There was an exodus of listeners from the AM dial. If you listened to music, you wanted that bigger sound," says George Green of George Green Enterprises, a Talk consultancy, and the former general manager of KABC-AM, the first talk radio station.

Activating a clause in Limbaugh's contract that he could leave KFBK only if he went to a station in a Top Five market, McLaughlin finagled to get Limbaugh on WABC-AM in New York. WABC was struggling after abandoning its Top 40 format in 1982 and agreed to carry Limbaugh from 10 a.m. to noon. After doing his local show, Limbaugh would then broadcast a national show from noon to 2 p.m. "It was an easy decision because the station was a mess and it was time to take chances," remembers John Mainelli, a radio consultant who was WABC's program director at the time. "My first impression was that I didn't care for this guy. But he was different, and I wasn't bored. He was obviously a showman."

It was up to McLaughlin to convince other radio stations, who believed all programming had to be local, that a national show could work in daytime. "All the wizards in radio said it couldn't be done," says Limbaugh. Green was typical of many of them. KABC was riding high with an all-local lineup, including the popular liberal Talk host Michael Jackson. When Green was offered Rush, he turned it down. He's regretted it ever since. "For me, as a local radio manager, syndication was a dirty word," Green admits. "Rush came in and created a monster on KFI-AM and buried Michael Jackson. The rest is history."

Insisting that stations take the show live, McLaughlin within a month had lined up 56 stations to carry The Rush Limbaugh Show nationally.

"There wasn't a star in AM radio, unless he or she was local. But those people were dinosaurs. When Rush came in, he was the young, vibrant, new sound, and he totally shook things up," says Glen Beck, syndicated by Premiere Radio Networks on 132 radio stations. "It amazes me he has become the establishment. That's the exact opposite of what he was?Now it amazes me how many shows say they are going to be the next Rush Limbaugh."

With strong ratings proving a national show could still play in Peoria, Rush mushroomed to 600 affiliates by 1994. AM stations realized they could build a whole format around Rush, and so came the explosion of syndicated Talk radio. "Rush made it easier for some stations to go to Talk that might otherwise have been playing polkas," says Talk radio consultant Walter Sabo. "Nobody has created more jobs in Talk radio than Rush. If you [put] him on, you had a viable business."

Talk hosts, liberal and conservative, owe a lot to Limbaugh. "He's the guy who paved the way. There is nobody better. He created an institution by putting this medium on the market. Everybody in Talk radio is indebted to him, I more than others," says Sean Hannity, co-host of Fox News Channel's Hannity and Colmes and host of The Sean Hannity Show on ABC Radio Networks, which is syndicated on 331 radio stations.

"Rush manages to keep his tongue in his cheek and on the roof of his mouth," says Alan Colmes, the liberal side of FNC's Hannity and Colmes and host of his own radio show, syndicated by Fox News. "He makes it quite palatable even to those who disagree."

Limbaugh is flattered by those who have followed him. "I've always said, the water is warm, come on in," he says. "The more the merrier."
But all Cinderella stories have their dark moments, and Limbaugh had his. Most radio shows, having built a hefty lineup of affiliates and a reliable track record of ratings gains, could count on national advertisers to follow. But even though Rush's audience was booming, his politically charged content worked against him with big advertisers. That adversity led to creative solutions.

"At the time we went out in 1988, network radio was an impressions buy. I was instantly tagged with the controversial label, and advertisers like Kraft and General Motors wouldn't have anything to do with me," notes Limbaugh. "We had to go out and find advertisers who were fearless, young entrepreneurs, companies that had never been on radio. And they had to be products I believed in and used. That was the case for the first 9 to 10 years, because companies don't want to deal with one complaint letter."

So Limbaugh began to talk about the products he liked on the air, including then-tiny beverage company Snapple, which he decreed on air to be "the official beverage of the Excellence in Broadcasting Network," (Limbaugh's company name). Years later, Snapple is a ubiquitous brand in the fiercely competitive beverage business.

"The advertisers who signed up with Rush had unbelievable success," says Natalie Swed Stone, director of national radio for OMD, who sold the Rush show when it was represented by MediaAmerica. "Rush always understood the importance of advertising. Rush would tell the producer he was going to talk about a product, and then the product would get results. And this was without a commercial schedule. Rush knew the power of the show."

Today the advertisers who have the greatest success with Rush have been those that use his personal testimonies, although those sponsors represent less than a third of the commercials that air on his show. Most are companies with a small portfolio of brands and product sales in the $40 million to $200 million range. "It's that size company that takes the time to invest in a single individual who could have a direct correlation to product sales," says Kraig Kitchin, president of Premiere.

"We wanted to align ourselves with Rush's army," says Neil Walsdorf, Jr., president of Mission Pharmacal. The drug maker has used Rush to voice its spots for its Citracal and Thera-Gesic products for more than two years. "We've never looked back. We've never had soft sales, and we keep hearing from our phone banks and buyers such as Wal-Mart and Walgreens about the impact Rush is having at the store level."

Limbaugh personally meets three or four times a year with those advertisers for whom he voices spots. "It's a total involvement and deeply personal. It's something we request. I don't want them to labor under any misconceptions," he says. It's also unusual. Very few radio personalities make the extra effort.

"Before Rush even took our business, we had an hour-long conference call with him. He wanted to understand our business," says Ty Shay, vp of marketing for discount travel Web site Hotwire.com, which began advertising on Rush in 2001. Hotwire launched in October 2000, and Shay credits Rush with helping to turn the company's first profit this year. "That process was really important because Rush became a true evangelist for our business. He cares about how we're doing and how consumers are interacting with our business," adds Shay. "We also started off using Howard Stern, but he wasn't interested in learning about Hotwire."

Many blue-chip advertisers, including Procter & Gamble, still refuse to advertise on The Rush Limbaugh Show. But Limbaugh's personal approach to advertising and the results he's delivered have overcome the resistance of others. Among the 85 advertisers running schedules are General Motors, Johnson & Johnson, Pfizer and Schering-Plough.

"The word 'controversial' has virtually been eliminated," says Kitchin. "Rush has been accepted within the culture of our country as a pundit, a commentator and an entertainer."

What makes the advertising so effective is Rush's loyal audience, which Limbaugh guards as if he knows each and every one of his listeners. They love him because he's never wavered from his views, even when critics attacked him. "Nobody prepared me for those that have called me a hatemonger and an extremist," says Limbaugh. "Nobody prepared me for what that meant. Now if that doesn't happen, I think I'm in trouble."

He starts preparing for his next show the night before, getting to the studio by 8 a.m. He used to gather all the material himself -- now he has three people clipping, e-mailing or faxing him ideas or stories. But unlike TV, there are no producers, no bookers, nobody writing scripts, no teleprompter. "It's stream of consciousness, none of it is scripted," says Limbaugh. "There's no backup, no crutches."

Fifteen years later, he feels he's got his act pretty finely honed. "I combine two elements: irreverent humor and serious discussion of issues," says Limbaugh, who doesn't know when he'll stop. "People tune in for both. But the key is having credibility. This has led to critics saying I am just an entertainer. I'm proud to be an entertainer. This is showbiz. At the same time, I believe everything I say."