Rush Limbaugh’s Other Dirty Little Secret

A few weeks ago we took a look at the marketing smarts of Rush Limbaugh and how they apply to creating a reliable emotional experience for your customers. Here’s another gem:

Here’s how a barter deal works: To launch the show, Limbaugh’s syndicator, Premiere Radio Networks …  gave Limbaugh’s three hours away — that’s right, no cash — to local radio stations, mostly in medium and smaller markets, back in the early 1990’s.
So, a local talk station got Rush’s show for zilch. In exchange, Premiere took for itself much of the local station’s available advertising time (roughly 15 minutes an hour) and packed the show with national ads it had already pre-sold. [Bill Mann: Limbaugh’s Dirty Little Secret of Radio “Success”]

Good to know. I always contend that nobody comes out of nowhere and there’s always context that explains someone’s success that we usually sweep under the rug so we can continue to tell ourselves the ‘self-made man’ bootstrapper fantasy.