Rush Limbaugh Ratings Surge

Earlier this month, Mark and Tommy posted stories about an article on Rush's ratings and whether they doubled. At the time I had to agree with Tommy that it was highly suspect that Rush's ratings actually doubled. I thought they had gone up, but when you have twenty million listeners, the law of diminishing returns kicks in.

Let's get the claim accurate. According to Talkers magazine earlier this month, Rush's ratings nearly doubled from 14 to 25 million. And now we have some hard numbers rolling in to check the claim. According to The Radio Equalizer, most markets saw a significant increase. In some markets Rush did much better than others, and here are some in which Rush's bump was jaw dropping.

In New York City, WABC has experienced huge gains during Rush's noon- 3pm timeslot: from 4.6 to 6.7 overall (12 and older) share, good for first place overall in the nation's largest market. Rush's Big Apple listenership is now estimated at 693,000.
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Houston's results were truly blockbuster: 6.0 to 9.8 overall, ranking number one with a bullet and audience of 382,300. Men 35-64: number one again, from 8.6 to 12.2 over three months. Adults 25-54: first place, 4.6 to 8.7. Women 25-54: 3.7 to 8.3 again good for a top ranking.
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Bucking Detroit's recent Democratic voting trend, Rush's performance on WJR-AM has been more significant than ever, moving into first place with a 5.8 to 9.6 jump. Men 35-64: number one and 11.6 share. Total audience: 253,000.

The Nola TV blogger Walker, TV Ranger reports on a small New Orleans station which helped itself by booking Rush. While this can't count as a doubling of Rush's share, it's a double for the radio station.

Next came WRNO, which thanks to Limbaugh (and to a lesser degree Sean Hannity's mid-afternoon syndicated show) has more than doubled its overall audience in the past year (see related ratings chart) while moving from the market's No. 11 station to No. 6.

I don't know if overall this gets Rush to 25 million from 14 million, but there is no question that Rush's ratings are spiking. Rush is not going away, but was it a good strategy for Obama to elevate Rush? Put it this way, while the US economy is suffering, Obama saw to it that Rush could still get top dollar for his ad placements.