When Dennis Miller left syndicated radio on Westwood One, someone came up with Jonathan Brandmeier as a replacement. He was well known in Chicago mostly an entertainment radio talker, talking about movies, TV, celebrity gossip. He had his own band in Chicago that would play at clubs.
Someone thought it would be a good idea to take a mostly apolitical guy not known outside of Chicago and have him play the role of a meat eating Conservative to a national audience. It didn’t work. Saying you really like Elizabeth Warren’s politics and calling Donald Trump a racist xenophobic would be a red flag to anyone paying attention.
By mutual agreement, Westwood One will be dropping Johnny B in early 2017 when his contract runs out.
Another problem the show had was its time slot. The syndication business has aligned to 3 hour shows at 6/9/noon/3/6/9 ET. That meant either airing only two hours (no rational person would drop Rush for a total unknown) or carrying the show on delay, mostly in the evening. There is a pretty fundamental rule in syndication – if your show is based on callers calling in, they have to be hearing the show live. Even his home station WLS-AM didn’t carry the first two hours live.