Today I spent an hour monitoring the local ad breaks in the Rush Limbaugh Show, to see what local businesses were supporting his misogyny. And what I heard made me feel pretty good: there was an obvious dearth of actual local advertising.  

I was listening on WSNO, 1450 AM in central Vermont, roughly between 12:40 and 1:40 pm. A decent sample size.

The tally:

— 6 local paid spots

— 7 national ads*

— 4 public service announcements (unpaid)

— 5 station promos (unpaid)

— 3 bits of station content (unpaid; weather, community calendar)

*Syndicated programs are often bartered: You get our shows for free, you agree to carry our spots. The stations put those ads in open slots, wherever they haven’t managed to sell the time to local advertisers. These spots are usually offloaded into non-peak hours; their appearance in Limbaugh is not a good sign for him.

Rush Limbaugh is the highest-rated conservative talker, and he’s supposed to be a profit center for local stations. And yet, WSNO only managed to sell six slots out of 25. That’s a really bad ratio. It’s strong evidence that a lot of local advertisers are steering clear of Rush, even though there’s been no public groundswell on the local level.

So you probably want to know: who’s still sponsoring Rush?

Answers after the jump…  

There was only one local advertiser with multiple spots in that hour of Limbaugh: Bruce Lisman’s Campaign for Vermont, with two.

Bruce, Bruce, Bruce, I’m disappointed. I thought you were nonpartisan!

Surely, if you seek to build a broad coalition of support for your “common sense” ideas, the last thing you’d want to do is associate your cause with Rush Limbaugh. I’m sure I speak for all of us at GMD when I say, please reconsider your support for Rush. It’s only harming your credibility as a nonpartisan entity.

Snort.

The other local advertisers were three car dealerships — Walker Volkswagen, Town and Country Honda, and Formula Nissan — and Westview Meadows, a retirement community in Montpelier. The dealerships buy huge amounts of advertising on just about every local radio station in the area, and probably made a big “Run of Schedule” buy on WSNO — meaning their ads run throughout the day, not on any particular show. Retirement home, there’s Rush’s core demographic in a nutshell.

I’ll also mention that many of those national advertisers were not… shall we say… from the best of families. They included a “natural” weight-loss supplement, the Lifelock identity-security pitch, an ambulance-chasing lawyer trolling for mesothelioma patients, and an investment firm trying to get people to invest their IRAs in gold. (They’re going to hell.)

All in all, a very weak showing for the King of Conservative Talk.  If this randomly-selected hour is any indication, Rush Limbaugh may be in even more trouble than we thought.

If you want to monitor your local station while minimizing your exposure to Rush, his local breaks occur at roughly the same times every hour, approximately :18-20, :30-34, :45-46. :54-56, and :58-06 (mostly news, but also local spots). Simplest thing is to listen during those eight minutes, or perhaps from :54-06 if you can stand two minutes of Rush.

VT stations that carry Rush: WVMT (620 AM) in Burlington, WSNO (1450 AM) in Barre, and WSYB (1380 AM) in Rutland. Also NH-based AM 1490 in the Upper Valley.