This year on August 1 talk radio will be 19 years old. It started with Rush Limbaugh and the end of the old FCC Fairness Doctrine that mandated “balance” in political opinion on the airwaves.
Tomorrow, Rush Limbaugh announced on his show today, he will not be performing his assigned host duties flawlessly. He will not be performing them at all. Instead he will be in Detroit talking to his new sponsor General Motors.
Conservatives will understand that this is an epic event. Let us spell it out.
Beginning in the spring of 2007 General Motors Corporation will be advertising on the Rush Limbaugh Program.
Up till now the national consumer brands have been reluctant to advertise on controversial conservative talk radio. That is odd, when you consider that talk radio enjoys huge national audiences. But we know why.
The big consumer corporations are afraid. They are afraid of being mau-maued by liberal interest groups. There is even the possibility of a boycott.
If you doubt that read the comments about General Motors’ decision to hire conservative host Sean Hannity as “lead spokesman for a car giveaway campaign called ‘You’re a Great American.’” Lots of people would like to punish General Motors for using Hannity as a spokesman.
I wonder if General Motors knows what it is getting into. I’d say that if a Democrat gets into the White House in 2008 then congressional Democrats will want to punish GM for advertising on conservative talk radio.
In fact I wouldn’t be surprised if such an effort begins by the summer.
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