Rush Limbaugh Talks About Affiliate Meet&Greet

As Media Confidential posted yesterday, Rush Limbaugh took advantage of so many radio owners and execs in Orlando for the Radio Show. 

SEE 'RUSH CUTS-THE-CAKE':  Click Here 

El Rushbo hosted a ‘Thank-You” meet-and-greet at the Ritz-Carlton Wednesday evening.

He talked about the event during Thursday’s radio show: 

This is the week for the National Association of Broadcasters convention, and this is the 25th anniversary year of this program. So we threw, the EIB Network threw, a cocktail party and reception for all of our affiliate radio stations, stations that carry the program, and it was really nice.  It was from 5 p.m. to 7 p.m., and I just want to share with you what I told them.  These are the people that own and operate, or manage and/or run, the radio station.  Some of them had family with them, and some of them had friends. 

But I stood up -- I didn't speak to them long, five or seven minutes -- and I recounted some of the early days, what I call the "rat radio days" where you couldn't keep me out of the radio station. It was all-consuming and, you know, how things change. But I said, "The one thing that hasn't changed is my devotion to you and my appreciation for all of you."  I said, "I've been blessed. My life has been truly blessed, but none of what I've been able to experience would have happened had it not been for the people on these radio stations that carry the program." 

They're the ones that make it all possible for everything else to happen.  Boy... As I acknowledged, and they laughed affectionately when I said I've put them through some really stressful times with a couple or three little events over the course of 25 years, and they've hung in there. They have never wavered.  They've hung in, and I've always known they would, and that gives me confidence. I can't tell you the kind of confidence that that gives to me or inspires in me, and it also guarantees stability. 

You all know where this radio show's gonna be each and every day.  A number of you have, over the course of the many years here, asked me why the program's not on satellite especially when Sirius and XM were starting up. Many of you wanted to know why, and it's because of the affiliates.  I promised them early on, in the early onset days of satellite, that I would not cannibalize them and make the program available on satellite. People thought that was silly. 

Of course, the smart business decision would be to put the radio show where the vast majority of people can hear it -- and I've always believed that if the content is there, people will go wherever they have to to get it. Even if it's two tin cans and a string, it doesn't matter: AM, FM, satellite, wherever it is, if people like it, they'll go there.  My job has always been to keep this content, at least at your level-of-expectation or greater.  These people took this show 25 years ago…they took a real risk when this program started, and they've hung in through all these times.

 Tom’s Take: Rush did not mention his private meeting with the Dickey Brothers prior to be event.