Debunk of Limbaugh's "20 million listeners"
Posted: Mon Mar 30, 2009 8:48 am
Complete roast here.
Why don't we just pretend Rush Limbaugh has 50 million listeners?
by Eric Boehlert
[big snip]
Kurtz's sloppy reporting highlighted the media's perpetual soft spot for Limbaugh's ratings. As Farhi noted, nobody has specific numbers about what the talker's audience is and "Limbaugh himself has muddied the water with the claim that he reaches 20 million people a week, although there's no independent support for that figure."
Yet, for years, news consumers have been told 20 million people listen each week. It's a statistic that has become absolutely synonymous with Limbaugh.
But where did that ginormous number come from? From Limbaugh, of course. The first reported reference I could find came from the July 31, 1993, issue of the radio bible, Billboard magazine, which reported "Li mbaugh's show is now heard on 610 stations and reaches approximately 20 million listeners, according to [Kit] Carson," Limbaugh's "chief of staff."
According to Limbaugh's right-hand person, the talker had 20 million listeners. Was there any way to confirm that? Not really, but no matter: The media loved the nice round number, and soon it began to appear everywhere -- but often without the acknowledgement that the stat came from Limbaugh's camp. The following month, in August 1993, U.S. News & World Report announced: "Welcome, one and all, to Rush World, the one-man media theme park of the '90s. Over here, the Radio Show, reaching 20 million listeners a week on 616 stations."
And the month after that, conservative columnist Cal Thomas wrote that Limbaugh "is heard on more than 600 mostly AM radio stations with an audience estimated at 20 million listeners per week, is a phenomenon unseen in modern times."
A check of Nexis today finds more than 800 news references to that mythical Limbaugh number throughout the years. Despite the fact nobody knows if it's accurate, the figure has been codified: Limbaugh attracts 20 million listeners each week. Wow.
But what other type of media reporting do journalists gladly repeat ratings numbers based on nothing more than a feel-good estimate provided by broadcasters? (Why stop at 20? Why not claim Limbaugh has 50 million listeners each week?)
And how amazing is this: Limbaugh in 1993 claimed he had 20 million listeners, and in 2009 the press is still mouthing the same statistic. Meaning that, until recently, Limbaugh's audience hadn't budged -- not up, not down -- in 16 years.. Obviously that doesn't pass any kind of smell test.
Why is it so difficult to pinpoint the number? First, much of radio's ratings methodology remains stuck in the 1960s, and it takes months to generate nationwide audience figures -- unlike TV ratings, which can often be measured within 24 hours. And second, because Limbaugh appears on a patchwork of stations all over the country, it's tough to add up all the numbers for an accurate reading. As Farhi noted, Arbitron, the overseer of U.S. radio ratings, has never tried to measure Limbaugh's audience. And it has no plans to since, as its spokesman told the newspaper, "There is no economic motivation for any objective third party to do that kind of analysis."
Obviously radio syndicators have ratings numbers off of which they sell advertising, but those figures are closely held -- unlike Arbitron data, which is more widely avail able. So, basically, it's up to the syndicator to dole out the ratings numbers to the press; like last year, when Limbaugh's syndicator, Premiere Radio Networks, claimed 20 million listeners tuned into Limbaugh's show each week.
Also keep in mind that eight-digit number is what's known in radio as the "cume" (short for cumulative). It in no way reflects the actual audience size like the way television shows are measured minute by minute or half-hour by half-hour. Instead, the cume number represents a very large -- and generous -- umbrella covering the number of people who, in theory, tune into a program at any time during the week, even if it's for just two minutes.
As a radio trade reporter confirmed to MSNBC last week, common industry shorthand to determine the actual size of a radio audience at any given moment is to cut the cume figure down by a factor of 10, which would mean Limbaugh's 20 million becomes 2 million. Or, if you take the more modest cume number of 14 million, which some inside the industry have used to judge the talker's audience, Limbaugh's rating becomes 1.4 million, which is roughly the same size audience that Rachel Maddow and Keith Olbermann get each night on cable TV. So why doesn't the press treat them as the ultimate kingmakers?
...
The truth is journalists only have a faint idea of how many people listen to Limbaugh's program each week. And until reporters can get some independently verifiable information, they shouldn't pretend hunches represent facts. And they shouldn't announce Limbaugh's audience has doubled unless they can prove it."
Media Matters
Why don't we just pretend Rush Limbaugh has 50 million listeners?
by Eric Boehlert
[big snip]
Kurtz's sloppy reporting highlighted the media's perpetual soft spot for Limbaugh's ratings. As Farhi noted, nobody has specific numbers about what the talker's audience is and "Limbaugh himself has muddied the water with the claim that he reaches 20 million people a week, although there's no independent support for that figure."
Yet, for years, news consumers have been told 20 million people listen each week. It's a statistic that has become absolutely synonymous with Limbaugh.
But where did that ginormous number come from? From Limbaugh, of course. The first reported reference I could find came from the July 31, 1993, issue of the radio bible, Billboard magazine, which reported "Li mbaugh's show is now heard on 610 stations and reaches approximately 20 million listeners, according to [Kit] Carson," Limbaugh's "chief of staff."
According to Limbaugh's right-hand person, the talker had 20 million listeners. Was there any way to confirm that? Not really, but no matter: The media loved the nice round number, and soon it began to appear everywhere -- but often without the acknowledgement that the stat came from Limbaugh's camp. The following month, in August 1993, U.S. News & World Report announced: "Welcome, one and all, to Rush World, the one-man media theme park of the '90s. Over here, the Radio Show, reaching 20 million listeners a week on 616 stations."
And the month after that, conservative columnist Cal Thomas wrote that Limbaugh "is heard on more than 600 mostly AM radio stations with an audience estimated at 20 million listeners per week, is a phenomenon unseen in modern times."
A check of Nexis today finds more than 800 news references to that mythical Limbaugh number throughout the years. Despite the fact nobody knows if it's accurate, the figure has been codified: Limbaugh attracts 20 million listeners each week. Wow.
But what other type of media reporting do journalists gladly repeat ratings numbers based on nothing more than a feel-good estimate provided by broadcasters? (Why stop at 20? Why not claim Limbaugh has 50 million listeners each week?)
And how amazing is this: Limbaugh in 1993 claimed he had 20 million listeners, and in 2009 the press is still mouthing the same statistic. Meaning that, until recently, Limbaugh's audience hadn't budged -- not up, not down -- in 16 years.. Obviously that doesn't pass any kind of smell test.
Why is it so difficult to pinpoint the number? First, much of radio's ratings methodology remains stuck in the 1960s, and it takes months to generate nationwide audience figures -- unlike TV ratings, which can often be measured within 24 hours. And second, because Limbaugh appears on a patchwork of stations all over the country, it's tough to add up all the numbers for an accurate reading. As Farhi noted, Arbitron, the overseer of U.S. radio ratings, has never tried to measure Limbaugh's audience. And it has no plans to since, as its spokesman told the newspaper, "There is no economic motivation for any objective third party to do that kind of analysis."
Obviously radio syndicators have ratings numbers off of which they sell advertising, but those figures are closely held -- unlike Arbitron data, which is more widely avail able. So, basically, it's up to the syndicator to dole out the ratings numbers to the press; like last year, when Limbaugh's syndicator, Premiere Radio Networks, claimed 20 million listeners tuned into Limbaugh's show each week.
Also keep in mind that eight-digit number is what's known in radio as the "cume" (short for cumulative). It in no way reflects the actual audience size like the way television shows are measured minute by minute or half-hour by half-hour. Instead, the cume number represents a very large -- and generous -- umbrella covering the number of people who, in theory, tune into a program at any time during the week, even if it's for just two minutes.
As a radio trade reporter confirmed to MSNBC last week, common industry shorthand to determine the actual size of a radio audience at any given moment is to cut the cume figure down by a factor of 10, which would mean Limbaugh's 20 million becomes 2 million. Or, if you take the more modest cume number of 14 million, which some inside the industry have used to judge the talker's audience, Limbaugh's rating becomes 1.4 million, which is roughly the same size audience that Rachel Maddow and Keith Olbermann get each night on cable TV. So why doesn't the press treat them as the ultimate kingmakers?
...
The truth is journalists only have a faint idea of how many people listen to Limbaugh's program each week. And until reporters can get some independently verifiable information, they shouldn't pretend hunches represent facts. And they shouldn't announce Limbaugh's audience has doubled unless they can prove it."
Media Matters