The value of advertising on talk radio is enormous. It has been said that talk radio is the most effective place to advertise on radio, and that listeners of talk radio support those products with their purchasing dollars.
The most popular talk show on radio is The Rush Limbaugh show, and this has been the case for almost 25 years. Literally millions of listeners tune in to the Rush Limbaugh Show daily.
It's not surprising then, that when listeners of that show, who buy products 'endorsed' by Rush, learn of an organized effort to convince advertisers to pull their ads, in an attempt to shut down the show and silence his voice from the radio (and make no mistake, that was the hope, and the aim of the organizers), and those advertisers succumb to this outside pressure (become victims), there is a backlash. Those loyal listeners feel that those companies
do not care about their business. And there is much truth to this.
Many companies have a philosophy that leans left or right. When they advertise on Rush's show, we assume (perhaps wrongly) that they share our views. We buy their products.
It's obvious that some of those companies have felt the sting of their hasty decision to deny themselves access to Rush's listeners, and have asked to return to the show, when they realized that many of the people who wrote, or phoned them to urge them to pull their ads, were not really their customers in the first place.
This is why boycotts of products, or campaigns such as this one against The Rush Limbaugh Show, are rarely successful. They are usually conducted by organizations who really have no interest in the products themselves; their interest is to use those products or companies as a tool to advance an agenda, or as in this case, to silence free speech of someone they disagree with.
Voters in the Marketplace of products, actually do buy those products. They vote with their dollars.
A company that does not know where it's business comes from, should think carefully before taking action on any organized effort like we saw last week.
Articles: Stand Up for Rush - and All of Us
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