{"id":4279,"date":"2012-03-03T08:07:11","date_gmt":"2012-03-03T13:07:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/streamingradioguide.com\/startingover\/?p=4279"},"modified":"2012-03-03T08:18:27","modified_gmt":"2012-03-03T13:18:27","slug":"should-rush-limbaugh-be-fired","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/streamingradioguide.com\/startingover\/?p=4279","title":{"rendered":"Should Rush Limbaugh be fired?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Various news outlets have started running “polls” asking if Rush Limbaugh should be fired – what “The Media” don’t seem to understand is that Rush Limbaugh cannot be fired<\/span><\/strong>.\u00a0\u00a0 Rush is employed by his own production company, the same arrangement as Glenn Beck.\u00a0\u00a0 He has an iron clad contract with Premiere as his syndicator through 2016 that was written to not allow the contract to be terminated for anything Rush does on the air.\u00a0\u00a0 <\/strong><\/p>\n

Rush Limbaugh is no Don Imus<\/strong>.\u00a0\u00a0 He has complete control over his product.\u00a0 His producers and staff all work for Rush, not for Premiere or Clear Channel. \u00a0 Rush signs their paychecks – Rush learned a long time ago that he needed to be the boss of the people involved in producing his show so he didn’t wind up with FM dope smoking union thugs doing his call screening and sabotaging his program.<\/p>\n

Let’s say just for the sake of argument that Bob Pittman<\/strong> at Clear Channel thought it was in the best interest of his company to part ways with Rush (he probably does, given his own political leanings) \u00a0 Premiere would have to come up with probably $200 million to pay out the rest of Rush’s contract – but even that is probably not possible – my memory is the size of the check Premiere cuts to Rush is partly Rush getting a percentage of the national advertising revenue, which would make a very costly court case for Clear Channel, with lawyers speculating over what Rush could have made if the contract hadn’t been abrogated.\u00a0 Rush had the clout in 2008 and the smart lawyers that would not allow the contract to have a non-compete requirement in the event the contract is terminated by Clear Channel and “paid off” – I haven’t seen the contract, but I would be shocked if that was in there.<\/p>\n

The next problem for former AOL head Bob Pittman<\/strong> would be the loss of revenue to his company.\u00a0 While Clear Channel carries the show on its own stations, in many markets other radio owners are paying Premiere just to have the rights to the show.\u00a0 That money would go away instantly.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Hannity only has an audience because of the Rush leadin, and that audience has been dissipating over the last decade.\u00a0 Hannity doesn’t have the clout of Rush, and he doesn’t own his own production company.\u00a0 Dr Laura and Dean Edell are already gone.\u00a0\u00a0 Glenn Beck has one foot out the door already with GBTV.<\/p>\n

One option might be for Clear Channel to drop Rush from their stations, but Premiere to keep syndicating his show – but that would just mean all the radio stations who have been waiting in line for 20 years to carry Rush would step forward and fill the vacuum.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 If Premiere refused to sell the program to new affiliates, Rush again would have a winning lawsuit for Premiere failing to carry out the terms of their contract.<\/p>\n

Even in the worst case – if Clear Channel’s lawyers found a way to escape the contract (bankruptcy of Premiere?) without incurring huge financial damages, Rush has a long standing internet based subscription service that wold allow him to continue to survive if he was completely cut off from radio.\u00a0\u00a0 Several of my “polls” over the past few years have been asking if people would be willing to pay to listen to Rush if he was no longer on radio.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 That question is becoming less and less theoretical.<\/p>\n

The biggest problem \/ mistake for Rush is that Premiere owns the domain RushLimbaugh.com – Glenn Beck’s production company owns glennbeck.com, so if Rush and Premiere broke off their contract, Premiere still owns the RushLimbaugh.com web site.\u00a0\u00a0 I don’t know if Rush owns the archives of his programs or if that is also owned by Premiere.<\/p>\n

Rush has been down this road before, the most memorable one being his “making fun” of Michael J Fox’s deliberate display of his Parkinson’s in front of Congress – in that case, Rush escaped a lot of the heat because he turned out to be right.\u00a0\u00a0 Michael J Fox had deliberately not taken his medication in order to put on a show for the TV cameras.<\/p>\n

This time, Rush may have crossed a line too far.\u00a0\u00a0 With no evidence, he has concluded that any woman who is taking birth control pills must be sexually active and promiscuous, neither of which are “known facts” about the woman in question. \u00a0 Despite his experience with taking pills, Rush doesn’t know the first thing about birth control pills. \u00a0 During his rant, he made the implication that she was taking them “once in a while” whenever she had sex, suggesting the more sex she had, the more birth control pills she needed.<\/p>\n

Birth Control pills have to be taking one a day in a 28 day cycle.\u00a0\u00a0 Each pill contains a different mix of estrogen and progestine and have to be taken in sequence – has Rush never seen birth control pills?\u00a0\u00a0 If a woman doesn’t regularly take the correct pill each day, there is a very good chance she will become pregnant if she is sexually active.\u00a0\u00a0 Birth Control pills are entirely different than “morning after” pills.<\/p>\n

Images of Birth Control pills and explanation of how they work<\/a><\/p>\n

Many women take birth control pills for reasons other than preventing pregnancy.<\/p>\n

http:\/\/www.webmd.com\/sex\/birth-control\/features\/other-reasons-to-take-the-pill<\/p>\n

The most common reasons are to reduce painful menstruation and problems with endometriosis.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Ms Flute told a story about “a friend” who had lost an ovary due to polycystic Ovarian Syndrome, implying that not taking the pill would have prevented the loss of the ovary, which is not true.\u00a0\u00a0 The pill only mitigates the symptoms of the disease, not the progression.\u00a0 The Progressive talkers of the world have already lost track of the fact that Ms Flute was not talking about\u00a0 herself, but a hypothetical “friend”.\u00a0 She’s in law school at Georgetown to become an advocate on women’s issues.\u00a0\u00a0 She knows exactly what she is doing and so does the White House.\u00a0\u00a0 They are not stupid people.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Various news outlets have started running “polls” asking if Rush Limbaugh should be fired – what “The Media” don’t seem to understand is that Rush Limbaugh cannot be fired.\u00a0\u00a0 Rush is employed by his own production company, the same arrangement … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[18,100,98],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4279","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-radio-biz","category-rush-limbaugh","category-talk-radio"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/streamingradioguide.com\/startingover\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4279","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/streamingradioguide.com\/startingover\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/streamingradioguide.com\/startingover\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/streamingradioguide.com\/startingover\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/streamingradioguide.com\/startingover\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4279"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/streamingradioguide.com\/startingover\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4279\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4283,"href":"https:\/\/streamingradioguide.com\/startingover\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4279\/revisions\/4283"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/streamingradioguide.com\/startingover\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4279"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/streamingradioguide.com\/startingover\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4279"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/streamingradioguide.com\/startingover\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4279"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}