{"id":181682,"date":"2016-04-14T19:30:00","date_gmt":"2016-04-15T00:30:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2016\/04\/14\/i-will-dine-on-his-tears-and-they-will-be-sweet\/"},"modified":"2016-04-14T19:30:00","modified_gmt":"2016-04-15T00:30:00","slug":"i-will-dine-on-his-tears-and-they-will-be-sweet","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2016\/04\/14\/i-will-dine-on-his-tears-and-they-will-be-sweet\/","title":{"rendered":"I Will Dine on His Tears, and They Will Be Sweet"},"content":{"rendered":"

It looks like I Heart Radio, the company known as Clear Channel before Bain Capital looted it, is on the edge of collapse, and it looks like Rush Limbaugh will be facing a far less generous contract when it is renewed<\/a>:<\/p>\n

One of the favorite pastimes for sports fans is commiserating over the worst contract their home team ever made; guffawing over management\u2019s decision to waste tens of millions of dollars for a player who never justified the huge payday. (See: Gilbert Arenas<\/a>.)<\/p>\n

For talk radio, there\u2019s probably only one contract that enters that realm of notoriety: Rush Limbaugh\u2019s eight-year, $400-million deal<\/a>, signed in the summer of 2008 with his longtime radio employer Premiere Radio Networks.<\/p>\n

Owned by Clear Channel Communications, which has since changed its name<\/a> to iHeartRadio, Premiere\u2019s Limbaugh deal instantly dwarfed any payout in AM\/FM history. (Only Howard Stern\u2019s contract with Sirius was larger.) The contract, which included a staggering $100 million signing bonus<\/a>, never panned out as the wheels began to come off<\/a> Limbaugh\u2019s radio empire. <\/span>
<\/span>This year, his contract is up and the timing couldn\u2019t be worse. The talker is facing ratings hurdles<\/a>, aging demographics, and an advertising community that increasingly views him as toxic<\/a>, thanks in part to his days-long<\/a> sexist meltdown over Sandra Fluke in 2012. (He\u2019s also stumbling through<\/a> the GOP primary season.)<\/span><\/p>\n

Concurrently, iHeartRadio\u2019s parent company, iHeartMedia, is heading to court, teetering on bankruptcy. The once-dominant radio behemoth is saddled with<\/a> $20 billion in debt, thanks to a misguided leveraged takeover engineered by Bain Capital in 2008<\/a>, the same year the radio giant inked its disastrous Limbaugh deal.<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I am so amused that in its own way, Mitt Rmoney’s bucket shop is involved in Limbaugh’s downfall.<\/p>\n

I am VERY<\/b> amused.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It looks like I Heart Radio, the company known as Clear Channel before Bain Capital looted it, is on the edge of collapse, and it looks like Rush Limbaugh will be facing a far less generous contract when it is renewed: One of the favorite pastimes for sports fans is commiserating over the worst contract …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1005,970,1004,1064,1019],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-181682","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-business","category-corruption","category-finance","category-media","category-schadenfreude"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/181682"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=181682"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/181682\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=181682"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=181682"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=181682"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}