Anyone know how Limbaugh's # of listeners is calculated?

[rurallib]

I keep hearing that he has "15 million" listeners. But I also hear that is bogus.
I believe that it was discussed once on Stephanie Miller. I think they said it was 3 million/day / 5 days per week = 15 million per week.
Is that the way it is calculated?
Also, Limbaugh is on @1,000 stations, is that true? Plus I understand his show (and Hannity's) is sold to stations for a very nominal fee like $5 a day.
I think Ed Schultz is on 1/10th of the stations but gets a much bigger per station listenership.

I am really curious. Does anyone know how this works.
Seems like yet another situation where the RW adjusts the truth.
I do know that even in Iowa I can get Limpy, Hannity and wannabes on multiple stations and NO lefty radio.

[niyad]

1. they pull the numbers out of their posteriors

[havocmom]

2. # of callers to his show X # of basements in America?

[Are_grits_groceries]

3. They check the water usage

when there is a break in his show and the Dittoheads go piss and flush.

[madokie]

4. I'd say that if the truth was known

that the big money man is funding the likes of limbaugh, hannity, beck and the rest. They're not on the air because of their popularity but because of their message and trust me when I say this, their message is not for us the average Jane's and Joe's benefit.

[rurallib]

6. Which is why I am curious what their real numbers are

Since the chamber of commerce was outed, makes me wonder what these clowns actual numbers are.

[imdjh]

16. RW radio here has NOTHING but scuzbag advertisers. Buy gold. The Three Step Plan. eHarmony. Cancare

Cancare clinic.

[pkdu]

5. MediaMatters describes it best I think...

http://mediamatters.org/columns/200903090031

[rurallib]

10. Thank you, great article

funny that Freerepublic was listed as a source.
Even the number of stations seems to be in flux.
I still wonder about the cost of the show.
Plus someone noted here before that Limbaugh avoids radio drive times. Competition is supposedly really, really soft during the noon segment. Corn and bean prices and 1940s music.

[zipplewrath]

20. Even worse

As this article says, his numbers are probably around 1.5 million. And studies in the past have put that at OVER 50% that are listeners that disagree with him. Just last week you had several GOP mouth pieces pointing out that Rush and others heavily opposed McCain in South Carolina and McCain still won. They might be able to get ears, but they can't seem to generate votes.

[pkdu]

29. Also - the numbers are "weekly" ...so , since most of these idiots

listen every day , divide again by 5.

[LTR]

7. A serious answer? Arbitron ratings estimates

I assume they just add up listeners from each of his stations.

Now, there are several ways of calculating them as well. The total average that tune in at any given time, and amount per quarter hour. Radio ratings can get a bit complicated.

[rurallib]

11. from what I have read radio ratings are pretty iffy

response #5 pretty much confirms that. Looks like the number is pretty much pulled from his cyst.
Based on some nubers I have seen, Steph far outdraws him on a per station basis.
I know that head to head here for the short time we had liberal radio, Al Franken nearly doubled Limpy.

[TreasonousBastard]

14. Arbitron's are iffy, and the new People Meter showed that in...

Philadelphia his ratings went up during the commercials, for some reason nobody understands. It also showed a lot of station changing that never showed up in the logbooks.

But, if it's difficult to come up with good numbers in the major markets, it's damn near impossible to come up with them in rural areas where advertisers really son't care much anyway, so there's no need for them.

Local stations have their own ways of judging listenership with contests, phone surveys, and other stuff, but they're not gonna let you and the competition know how they do it or what they find.

[DUgosh]

8. Fingers and toes

[no_hypocrisy]

9. The collective flushing of toilets during the commercial breaks?

[TreasonousBastard]

12. Arbitron does most of the work, and...

they have various surveys to try to track radio listenership. Besides their old weekly logbooks, they have phone surveys ("What are you listening to now?") and started cellphone surveys (gets 'em in the car). They have a new gadget called the "people meter" which actually knows what you're listening to, and that should be much more accurate when they get the bugs out.

Anyway, yeah, everyone likes to inflate their numbers, and strange ways of counting isn't unheard of. It's easy, since the real Arbitron numbers are only available to subscribers, and even they are limited in how much they can tell.

As far as that 5 buck a day goes, syndicators will often simply buy time on a station and share the ad revenue. Ther eare all sorts of deals out there, and I have no doubt some rural station with little money will take the five bucks to increase local ad revenue, while it costs Limbaugh's syndicator little or nothing and will add ratings numbers and more than 5 bucks in their national ad revenue.

FWIW, one not terribly reliable source claims:

♦ In New York City, WABC has experienced huge gains during Rush's noon- 3pm timeslot: from 4.6 to 6.7 overall (12 and older) share, good for first place overall in the nation's largest market. Rush's Big Apple listenership is now estimated at 693,000.

♦ In the second-largest market, Los Angeles, KFI-AM has surged into the number one position (all listeners 12 and older) from 9am to noon, with 618,000 listeners, a 4.6 to 6.0 audience share increase over three months and an even bigger males 35-64 (4.6 to 6.3) move, to take first place there as well.

♦ Chicago, saw another huge move, with Rush affiliate WLS also taking first place during his timeslot (12 and older), from 5.2 share to 6.9 and a total local listenership of 396,700 in the third-largest market.

♦ In Dallas - Fort Worth, 4.8 to 6.4 men 35-64 and fourth overall (12+), 3.5 to 4.5. Cumulative audience: 250,000.

♦ Houston's results were truly blockbuster: 6.0 to 9.8 overall, ranking number one with a bullet and audience of 382,300. Men 35-64: number one again, from 8.6 to 12.2 over three months. Adults 25-54: first place, 4.6 to 8.7. Women 25-54: 3.7 to 8.3 again good for a top ranking.

♦ DC's WMAL also saw Rush-related growth: 4.1 to 6.7, good for third overall and an audience of 155,300. Men 35-64: number one with a staggering 6.4 to 13.4 move.

http://newsbusters.org/blogs/brent-baker/2009/03/26/limbaughs-ratings-surge-coincides-white-house-attacks

[snagglepuss]

17. Really informative.

Thanks for posting. :thumbsup:

[lpbk2713]

13. They took a wild guess on how many Shittoheads tuned in on his best day ever.

And then multiplied it by five to come up with a weekly guess.

IOW they pulled the numbers right out of OxyRush's pimple-festered ass.

[Initech]

15. I'm guessing one of two methods: a dartboard or cow plop bingo.

[KharmaTrain]

18. Out Of His Ass...Literally

There are no ratings for nationally syndicated radio shows. It's a number guessed by the ratings on individual stations that has never been verified and promoted by his syndicators...

Here's more from the LA Times...

http://articles.latimes.com/2009/mar/09/entertainment/e...

Arbitron, the radio industry's dominant audience-measurement company, can say with some precision how large Limbaugh's audience is in a particular city and at a particular time, but it has never publicly released a national estimate for his show.

The difficulty comes from the vast patchwork that is Limbaugh's radio empire. His three-hour daily program is carried on more than 600 domestic stations, but these stations don't all carry the show at the same time or even for the same duration. Like KFI-AM (640) in L.A., most stations air all three hours of Limbaugh's broadcast each weekday, but some carry only two hours. Arbitron has never attempted to aggregate all of this audience data for these many stations and times.

"There is no economic motivation for any objective third party to do that kind of analysis," says Thom Mocarsky, an Arbitron spokesman.

And there are no ratings at all for a constituency of Limbaugh listeners: U.S. military personnel stationed overseas. Limbaugh's program is carried to these listeners on about 400 stations of varying audience sizes via the Armed Forces Radio Network, which Arbitron doesn't monitor.

Premiere Radio Networks, Limbaugh's national syndicator, estimated last year that 3.59 million people were in Limbaugh's audience during an average quarter-hour of his program, based on a review of Arbitron's piecemeal data about hundreds of stations.

And those numbers Premier cites go back to 2002...radio's audience size has shrunk since that date...a number many in the business cited at the time as being inflated.

Also radio ratings are misleading...many like to cite Cume...or cumulative listening...or the number of people who may tune in over a given week. Some of those people listen for hours while others tune out in 15 minutes...there has never been a survey that points to rushbo's "TSL" or time spent listening. The difference being those who gawk in the window vs. those who actually stick around.

If rushbo were such a ratings killer, he'd be wiping away the competition in markets across the country...he doesn't. In fact, many of the stations he's on are market bottom feeders...dying AM stations that plug him in as cheap programming.

The real problem here is the consolidation of the airwaves by a handful of large corporates. Cheap Channel, who owns Premier, owns a majority of rushbos stations; replacing local operations with turn-key repeater stations...thus why there is so much right wing claptrap. Also, with the massive flight of younger people from radio, all that's left are predominately older, white males who have been targeted by right wing propaganda for decades.

If you want to guestimate...which is all anyone else has done...here are the ratings:

http://www.radio-info.com/markets /

Now that's an aggregate number...all day, all shows. Unless you're a subscriber, you can't get the specific hourly breakouts. Also rushbo's daypart is one of the least listened to...about 25% of morning drive.

A recent report says that 91% of "talk" stations across the country skew "conservative". This is more a byproduct of "deregulation" than any marketplace demand.

[YOY]

19. They take a look at what percentage of Americans are:

-50+.
-White.
-Male.
-Unmarried or Divorced.
-No kids or Seldom See their kids because "the bitch is evil and wants my money."
-Been in trouble with the IRS at least once.
-Have little or no higher education.
-Self proclaimed financial experts.

Those that may be in that group and are not Limbaugh listeners are roughly equal to the outliers.

[sabrina 1]

21. The real test of how popular Rush Limbaugh really is

was when he made two separate attempts at being on television. The first one failed from being totally boring to the average viewer. The second because he was not that popular to begin with and then made some controversial remarks which obviously the audience didn't like.

I don't for a minute believe the inflated numbers they claim for his show. Every time he tries to go mainstream, he fails. His only audience is from the furthest of the radical rightwingnut fringes.

If he was the most popular talk-show host as they claim, he would by now have succeeded at having his own tv show. Instead, both of his attempts failed.

Every claim made by those who support Limbaugh, should be taken with a grain of salt.

[librechik]

22. nobody knows, it's all done in a locked room. But every once in a while

they have to take out a dead monkey and put in a new one.

[alfredo]

23. They count the multiple personalities of his listeners.

[HopeHoops]

24. Same as all of his other "facts" - he sucks the statistic out of his fat ass!

I doubt he even understands numbers larger than three.

[ddeclue]

25. weekly listeners so basically 3M x 5 days = 15 million..

[rurallib]

26. Ergo, Steph, Big Eddie etc are not all that far behind

given that leftys are on @100 stations, often much less, then the per station average appears much higher.
Also, I would bet that most if not all of Limpy's stations are owned by ClearChannel which is part of the same company he works for.
So his numbers are pretty bogus. Were they to go out and peddle their wares on an individual station basis, they probably couldn't do it.

[donheld]

27. He double it - most everybody has two ears

so each person counts as two

[guitar man]

28. Calculation?

They don't need no stinking calculation, they do the numbers like they do the rest of the show , they just make shit up.