Richard’s Take On Rush

By Richard Gilbert, Potluck crew

Richard Gilbert, crew of the Potluck column

I used to make a living running media companies.

These businesses were a collection of radio and television stations and daily and weekly newspapers scattered around Iowa, Illinois, Wisconsin, and other parts of the U.S.

Each year, I encouraged these companies' managers to write down their plans for the year ahead, including what they considered to be their business "mission."

I will always remember a plan submitted by the general manager of one of our radio stations in a neighboring state.

He wrote: "My station (and he gave the call letters) is like the old-time medicine wagon that has just pulled into a frontier town. The tailgate drops down to make a stage, and some guy dressed up in buckskin, and a feather headdress comes out from behind a curtain and starts pounding on a tom-tom. Townspeople begin to gather around the wagon. The harder and louder he pounds, the bigger the crowd becomes. Then the drumming stops, the drummer goes back inside the wagon, and a few minutes later out steps the same guy in a suit."

"The fancy-dressed man looks over the crowd and begins a very intense sales pitch about the miracle powers within the small glass bottle he waves in one hand. And he keeps up this sales pitch only to be continuously interrupted as folks in the crowd clamor to buy this miracle elixir. "

"Soon the stock is depleted, The tailgate stage is closed back into the wagon, and the show is over."

"That event," wrote my radio station manager, "describes my business mission. I am charged with drawing the largest crowd I possibly can so that guys in fancy suits can sell their magic elixirs to as many folks as they can."

"Now I keep telling myself that what my advertisers sell is usually more socially redeeming than snake oil, and thus mine is a worthwhile mission. But I also know that if I am not successful in getting a huge crowd (as measured by Arbitron) that you'll get someone else to beat the tom-tom. In which case, you will fire me, and I'll likely go into woodworking which is only my hobby now, but perhaps I could make a living at it."

The writer of that business plan did not get fired but was promoted several times to bigger and bigger jobs because he always found a way to grow the audience.

This week, I recalled that so-called mission statement as many loyal listeners of Rush Limbaugh mourn his death. Radio stations all over America carried his program, and the tom-tom beating that took place on his air attracted some 15.5 million listeners every day.

Rush Limbaugh died, February 17, 2021, of lung cancer.

To the folks who owned the nearly 600 "Rush" radio stations, it mattered not what message the tom-tom beat. Most of those stations were held by investors who don't even know what stations they owned, let alone who listens to them. But they made a lot of money with Rush, and Rush certainly did okay as a tom-tom beater as he amassed a half-a-billion-dollar fortune.

Rush certainly qualified as part of the vast information creature we call "The Media." And it was very, very good to him although he spent his tom-tom time railing about the terrible influence of The Media.

As I watch the cable news channels ("cable news" is an oxymoron when you think about it), I wonder if there isn't a good thesis topic for some aspiring MBA marketing candidates. Watch the commercials on these cable news channels and see which of the magic elixirs their pharmaceutical clients are hawking, and perhaps you will get a clue as to the channel's demographic profile. Is E.D. relief a big seller to Fox viewers? Maybe bladder control is the hot button for CNN's target audience, which leaves the MSNBC crowd needing to stave off dementia with a pill that derives miracle powers from jellyfish.

The other day, I talked with a good friend about the country's divisiveness and disruption with the latest flap that the Republican Party is in disarray. He confessed he was no longer a Republican but still a Conservative. He thinks Republicans and Democrats are equally screwed up to the point he doesn't even trust the system enough to want to vote anymore. Underlying cause of all this, he believes, is "The Media" echoing a familiar refrain.

The great irony in this sad commentary is that he has been enormously successful in owning communications companies.

And about a year ago, I was having breakfast with another friend who was CEO of a widely respected media company. Over eggs and hash browns, he told me he was getting out of the biz. He has since migrated to heading a charitable foundation where the enterprise's good works are much more measurable.

Get a couple of beers in most folks in media jobs, and they'll open up about what a scary place media can be because they have no idea where their careers are likely to go, or not. And that's because the competition is not just the other media companies; their competitors are all of us who can reach in our pocket, pull out our iPhones and get all the information available in the world, usually without an ad for E.D. mitigation. (I did say usually.)

Their other fear, of course, is not knowing what the objectives of the owners of their companies genuinely are. And if it is solely to sell elixir and not to honestly and impartially inform and educate the audience, are they just more guys in buckskin and feather headdresses beating on their tom-toms?