Report: Talk Radio Has An Advertising Problem

There are plenty of people listening to talk radio. But, according to The Wall Street Journal, over the past three years, it has become increasingly difficult to make money off it.

More than 50 million people in the U.S. tune in each week to news-talk radio stations that carry advertising, making it radio’s second-most popular format, behind country music, according to Nielsen.

But many national advertisers have fled from such stations in recent years, seeking to avoid associating their brands with potentially controversial programming. As a result, advertising on talk stations now costs about half what it does on music stations, given comparable audience metrics, according to industry executives.

Radio executives said the erosion of ad dollars from talk stations was driven in part by a series of organized social-media campaigns by liberal activists in early 2012 that scared away advertisers.

Wall Street Journal graphic

The social-media campaigns followed remarks by conservative talk-radio personality Rush Limbaugh, who called a Georgetown University law student a “slut” on the air after she had testified to lawmakers that her school should provide birth-control coverage to students despite its Catholic affiliation. Limbaugh’s spokesman Brian Glicklich said his comments were made “in satire, and decontextualized from his larger point.”

Activists were encouraged to record the exact time that companies’ ads ran on Mr. Limbaugh’s show, and because stations occasionally broadcast ads at the wrong time, brands suddenly had reason to reduce any risk of inadvertent appearances.

Local and direct-response advertisers, such as flower-delivery and financial services, continue to advertise on conservative talk shows. But overall demand has tanked among national advertisers for anything else that could air on the same stations, putting some syndicators and stations in a bind on their programming.

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