Rush Limbaugh’s Death Spiral Continues As He Gets Demoted To Low Rated Boston Station

The end is coming for both Rush Limbaugh and conservative talk radio as Limbaugh has seen his show demoted and shipped off to another low rated small station. Boston has become the latest city to send Limbaugh into a dark corner of the radio dial.

Eric Boehlert of Media Matters wrote:

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.

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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.

The Sandra Fluke incident was the moment when it all started to fall apart. Activists mobilized and instead of protesting Limbaugh targeted his advertisers with a boycott. The strategy had been successfully previously used to get Fox News to yank Glenn Beck off of their channel, but unlike Beck, Limbaugh attacked a private citizen with such misogyny and hate that the public reaction was swift and severe.

Fortune 500 advertisers fled and never came back. Limbaugh’s expensive deal caused radio stations to lose money by airing his show. Stations are being forced to carry Limbaugh and are paying him for the privilege of watching their ratings drop while losing money. Limbaugh’s show has been demoted to low-rated stations in New York, Los Angeles, Indianapolis, and Boston.

Limbaugh’s decline offers a peek into what could be the future for Fox News. Limbaugh and Fox News both attract the oldest audiences in their respective mediums. Both have not been able to attract younger viewers to replace their older base audience. Limbaugh was once considered to be the most influential voice in the Republican Party, but he has quickly slid into irrelevance. The demographic problems that plague Limbaugh are also nipping at the heels of Fox.

Rush Limbaugh is in a media death spiral, and if Fox News can’t attract younger viewers, they are destined to follow in Limbaugh’s footsteps.

Jason Easley

Jason is the managing editor. He is also a White House Press Pool and a Congressional correspondent for PoliticusUSA. Jason has a Bachelor’s Degree in Political Science. His graduate work focused on public policy, with a specialization in social reform movements.

Awards and  Professional Memberships

Member of the Society of Professional Journalists and The American Political Science Association