Wall Street Journal Looks At Talk Radio's Ad Problem

Talking About Talk

The WALL STREET JOURNAL has a look at "Talk Radio's Advertising Problem" posted late YESTERDAY (2/3) that notes the format's woes with advertisers who "have fled from such stations in recent years, seeking to avoid associating their brands with potentially controversial programming. As a result, advertising onTalk stations now costs about half what it does on music stations, given comparable audience metrics, according to industry executives."

Citing BIA/KELSEY figures showing a drop in revenue for pure Talk format stations from $271 million to $205 million between 2011 and 2013, the article by HANNAH KARP notes that "(r)adio 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," kicked off by the campaign targeting RUSH LIMBAUGH after his comments on law student/political activist SANDRA FLUKE.  "(T)he 2012 social-media campaigns on Talk-radio gave advertisers the jitters, according to syndicators and media buyers. The brands, according to one radio executive, don’t want to risk being 'Twitter-bombed.'"

MEDIA MATTERS FOR AMERICA EVP ANGELO CARUSONE, who led the anti-LIMBAUGH campaign, claimed that his group "didn’t intend to hurt the entire Talk-radio format," but that the industry was not "tracking ad placement carefully enough."

Read the story by clicking here.

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