Rush Limbaugh Ad Exodus Continues, 141 Companies Jump Ship
Calling Sarah Fluke a “slut” not only drew plenty of negative attention to Rush Limbaugh last week, it has led to a mass exodus of the talk show hosts advertisers. According to a listed report 141 companies have pulled their ad spots from Limbaugh’s often controversial show.
To put that number into perspective there were only 45 companies listed in that same report just one week earlier.
The advertiser report was leaked from an internal Premiere Radio Networks memo obtained by the Traffic Directors Guild of America.
Featured in those banned advertiser requests were 96 national company’s, 91 of which jumped ship in the last several days.
In what can only be described as a ripple affect those same company’s have also asked that Premiere Radio Networks not play their ads on the radio shows of other right-wing shock jocks which include Glenn Beck, Sean Hannity and Michael Salvage.
This isn’t the first time that a shock jock has lost advertisers because of comments they’ve made, however its typically non-political mouthpieces like Howard Stern who end up spewing misogynistic comments towards women, not political commentators.
Some of the biggest names that have pulled their spots include:
- Acura
- IBM
- American Express
- Loew’s
- McDonald’s
- NBC-TV
- US Army
- US Postal Service
The controversy has become so big over the last week that even Saturday Night Live (SNL) got in on the joke, opening the Jonah Hill hosted episode with a Rush Limbaugh spot in which he attacks his fleeing advertisers including the “sluts at AOL.”
Limbaugh has since offered a half-hearted apology that at first only played to his internet audience.
Do you think Rush Limbaugh has stepped over a fine line he’ll never fully be able to recover from in the eyes of advertisers?
