5-10-13
The week started with a leak from the Rush Limbaugh camp to the New York Daily News and Politico and it's ending with Cumulus CEO Lew Dickey fielding questions from Bloomberg TV. Squeezed in between was a Cumulus earnings release that spawned the quote heard around the radio world, ""We've had a tough go of it this last year. The facts are indisputable." The public contract negotiations continue as the Rush contracts with Cumulus stations come to end later this year.
All this banter back and forth is all a set up for the real story, which is what happens when the Rush contracts on Cumulus stations expire. the original plan was for Mike Huckabee to be the noon to 3PM Cumulus star. With his radio future in doubt that now looks more and more like it might be Michael Savage.
Dickey did not back down from Rush when he appeared on Bloomberg yesterday. "Our news talk segment
represents about 10% of our business. It's indisputable that it took a hit over the last year because of those events. We've moved on. We're growing again." What's also indisputable is that Rush Limbaugh, even 25 years into syndication, is still the king of talk radio and he's still heard on more radio stations than any other talk show host in the business.
Dickey told Bloomberg the revenue Cumulus lost was more than $5 million. Rush now airs on about 40 Cumulus stations, including WABC in New York. When asked about the threat from the Rush camp to leave those stations in the dust, Dickey replied, "sometimes contracts get negotiated in public. We prefer not to do that. We have the premiere talk distribution platform in the United States. If you want to be on the big stage in this game, you have to be on our radio stations in the largest markets. Everybody knows that."
Watch the entire Bloomberg interview with Lew Dickey HERE
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