Rush Goes On 30-Minute Pro-Radio Riff

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Radio executives got a little help “telling their story” on Wednesday. America’s most listened-to talk show host opened his show with a 30-minute rant about how strong radio is today, nearly 100 years after the medium was hatched.

Limbaugh quoted a Washington Times article, which featured his picture and cited quotes from Nielsen’s Brad Kelly, when detailing the hundreds of millions of people that still listen to radio every week.

Here’s what he said when speaking about the Nielsen numbers. “The way they do this is AM/FM radio has 243 million listeners. Radio reaches 93% of the U.S. population. The Washington Times did a story on this back on April the 18th. There’s one picture accompanying this story and it’s half of the front page — and that picture is me. Even in the age of sophisticated cable TV and video-on-demand, it is old-school AM/FM radio which rules the nation’s media world according to Nielsen, which has revealed the audience numbers.”

Limbaugh went on to quote the numbers many of you hear every day — and you most likely read about them every day here. “With 243 million monthly listeners, radio bests the
competition across the board. ‘Each week, more Americans tune to AM/FM radio than any other platform. What’s more, according to Nielsen … 93% of U.S. adults 18
and older listen to radio every week — more than those watching television or using a smartphone, TV connected device, tablet or PC,’ Nielsen noted … TV reaches 88%
of Americans and garners 229 million viewers.”

The Brad Kelly quote Limbaugh pulled: “Technology trends are a bit like fashion trends. They come and go, oftentimes long forgotten after the craze ends. But there’s one
notable exception to the technology/fashion trend rule in the media world — broadcast radio. AM/FM radio is the blue blazer of the media universe. Who would have
believed 100 years after its debut, AM/FM radio would continue to top the charts as the medium that reaches more consumers each week than any other?”

Limbaugh says compelling audio content, if done right, is just as influential and can be much bigger than television. “I’m not trying to put TV down. Do not misunderstand. This is not a versus, an either/or. But it is to suggest that, you know, a lot of people think, ‘Radio? That’s old-fashion. Gee, that’s nothing but old people.’ You’d be amazed at the numbers. Millennials. Nearly 80 million Millennials 18 to 34 tune in to radio. That’s 95% of the Millennial population. Ninety-five percent of the Millennial population listens to radio every week. The largest audience, of course, is Boomers and then Generation X. But we hit everybody. That’s my point. There are no boundaries. There are no religious boundaries. We have all three sexes. We have all the religions, all the different genders. Everybody is out there. You know, good radio is much more personal, much more intimate than television. I’m not putting TV down. Please do not misunderstand. I’m just reminding everybody of the true impact and power of radio.”

How Limbaugh’s radio rant came about, as he explained, was that he says he’s constantly asked to go back on television. His answer was that you cannot ad-lib on TV, and that’s
what he does on the radio. And then he went into his detailed explanation about the power of radio, which, no doubt, gave the listener the feeling that he was saying, “Why would I go back into television when I can get so much more by being myself and doing it all on the radio.”

Read the entire Rush transcript HERE.

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