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NEWS AND VIEWS THAT IMPACT LIMITED CONSTITUTIONAL GOVERNMENT

"There is danger from all men. The only maxim of a free government ought to be to trust no man living with
power to endanger the public liberty." - - - - John Adams

Tuesday, July 30, 2013

Leftists try to drive Rush and Hannity off the air



Leftist Thug Brownshirts Want Censorship
The neo-Fascist trash of America drove Glenn Beck off
Fox and now has targeted Limbaugh and Hannity.



The Bill of Rights - Our Founding Fathers were true radicals to institutionalize into law the freedom to criticize the State and its hack liar politicians.  But freedom of speech has no meaning to the scum of the Fascist Left.  They found a back door to abolish freedom of speech:  attack the advertisers.

The Left are out to target and take off the airwaves anyone who effectively presents the case for freedom.  They first targeted the advertisers for Glenn Beck's Fox News program.  Beck's "crime" was daring to vigorously rip the guts out of the Left on live TV.  Fox put dollars ahead of freedom, lost their nerve and dropped Beck.

Now Politico reports that America's No. 2 radio network is dropping Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity because of a combination of attacks on advertisers and "public" pressure.

Rush Limbaugh and Cumulus Media, the company that distributes the influential conservative's talk-radio show in some 40 major markets, are headed for divorce, says Dylan Byers at Politico.

Citing "an industry source," Byers says that Cumulus — the No. 2 radio network in the U.S., behind Clear Channel — won't renew either the contract of Limbaugh or fellow conservative talker Sean Hannity at the end of the year. This is "a major shakeup for the radio industry," Byers adds, and it's hard to argue with that. Limbaugh and Hannity have the biggest and second-biggest talk radio shows, respectively, in the country. By a lot.

That also makes Limbaugh and Hannity very expensive, and this reported move by Cumulus to dump the two stars is about money. The two radio talkers are represented by Premiere Networks, a Clear Channel division, and Premiere reportedly wants more money than Cumulus thinks Limbaugh and Hannity are worth. Cumulus declined to comment on the rumors reports Yahoo News.


Freedom Fighters vs Fascism.
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First the Fascist Left targeted the advertisers of Glenn Beck forcing him and his forceful point of view off Fox News.  Then they went after the advertisers of Rush Limbaugh causing major damage.  The Fascists of America know they cannot win an honest argument so they sneak behind the scenes like the snakes they are.
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Fox News chief Roger Ailes was reportedly tiring of Beck's increasingly strident diatribes (and lower ad income). Beck, for his part, said he felt constricted at Fox, and declared that he didn't need TV networks, moved to Dallas, and launched a subscription internet-only channel, GBTV. A year later, the channel — rebranded TheBlazeTV — has 300,000 paying members, brings in millions in revenue, and, in 2012, debuted on the TV sets of 14 million Dish Network customers.
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Limbaugh and Cumulus CEO Lew Dickey have been effectively negotiating in public since May, when Limbaugh threatened to leave Cumulus because Dickey had blamed Limbaugh's 2012 on-air insults of Georgetown Law student Sandra Fluke for driving advertisers away and costing Cumulus millions of dollars. Now, Limbaugh critics are calling this apparent breakdown in negotiations a win for the post-Fluke boycott.

"The boycotters did it," agrees Jason Easley at Politicus USA.

They got Cumulus to dump not only Limbaugh, but also Hannity. "Without the public pressure, bad publicity, and shame that the boycott brought on to his advertisers, Rush Limbaugh and Cumulus would probably still have a happy marriage," said Eastly.

If Politico's report is true, "Limbaugh's contentious and seemingly inevitable divorce from Cumulus Media and WABC has moved another step closer to reality," says David Hinckley at the New York Daily News. But that doesn't mean that Cumulus is dumping Limbaugh. "New York radio observers have been expecting for the past year that Limbaugh and probably Hannity would leave WABC, which is owned by Cumulus, for rival WOR," recently purchased by Clear Channel.

That's an important distinction, says Hinckley. And if Limbaugh goes to Clear Channel, it's not like he'll be off the airwaves. His legions of fans would just have to change the presets on their radios.  And Cumulus wouldn't drop conservative talk radio altogether — it would just switch personalities, says Byers.

In recent weeks, "Cumulus has been quietly reaching out to radio talent agents and political insiders about new local and regional station hosts to fill some of the airtime that will be left vacant by Limbaugh and Hannity," he says. "Cumulus is also expected to move some of its existing talent — which includes Mike Huckabee, Mark Levin, and Michael Savage — into one of the slots."
 



"Cumulus has already tried to position Huckabee as a 'safe' alternative (and boring alternative) to Limbaugh," says Adam Martin at New York: "A conservative commentator who wouldn't call people 'sluts' on air." Huckabee doesn't have a huge following, according to Talkers magazine's most recent analysis, but Savage and Levin do.

Readers should take Politico's entire report with a healthy grain of salt, says Radio Ink. "A story like this always seems to pop up around the quarterly earnings call," and it's most likely a negotiating tactic as Cumulus and Premier haggle over a price. For what it's worth, "a source tells Radio Ink nothing has been decided and a deal could even be worked out in the next month or so."

Maybe it will. Maybe it won't. But my guess is that Limbaugh and Hannity have the upper hand. If Premiere asks too high a price from Cumulus, Clear Channel can't really then pay Limbaugh and Hannity less than its subsidiary was demanding. But even if neither Clear Channel nor Cumulus are willing to pay up, Limbaugh has a large fan base that would follow him to satellite radio or the Internet. Glenn Beck seems to be making a tidy sum on his own.


 
 

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