Should the estate of John Cage sue for the long silences played on Rush Limbaugh's commercial breaks?

To date, over 50 advertisers have stopped paying Rush Limbaugh to spread his hateful, sexually-obsessive tirades. Here are some other stats from Daily Kos:

-- A total of 86 ads aired during WABC's online streaming broadcast of The Rush Limbaugh Show yesterday;

-- 77 of those ads were public service announcements donated free of charge by the Ad Council;

-- Of the nine paid spots that ran, seven were from companies that have said they have taken steps to ensure their ads no longer air during the program;

-- WABC's online feed included about 5:33 of dead air when ads would normally have run.

And LOLGOP reports that " Dead air has asked to not be aired during Rush Limbaugh's show."

Daily Kos: Rush Limbaugh just giving it away for free now

Mark Frauenfelder is the founder of Boing Boing and the editor-in-chief of MAKE and Cool Tools. Twitter: @frauenfelder. Come and hear Mark speak at the ALA conference in Chicago on July 1.

More at Boing Boing

The technology that links taxonomy and Star Trek

Hackers prepare for first "national holiday" in their honor

lisaz

I think that there’s been enough bashing on here for a while. What about all the left winger’s who have made equally shameful and insulting comments about women?

http://washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/2012/03/outrage-over-limbaugh-what-about-left-wing-misogyny/348276

Rush is a big, fat, idiot who says thing guaranteed to offend. Why does this require numerous posts?
- GawainLavers
  
  Then it would, be definition, not be talk radio.
- Mark_Frauenfelder
  
  He’s free to spew his dangerous insane bullshit. We are free to call him out on it and to let his advertisers know that we will call them out for paying Limbaugh to spew his dangerous insane bullshit.
  
  The leftwingers who call women bad names are jackasses, but they don’t have 1/1oooth the political power of Limbaugh. Don’t you get that?
http://profile.yahoo.com/RV6FM7LPINFKDX3OTDJO72XGHE Eddie's Mom

Another dairy at Kos pointed out that the online feed is not a true test. While the PSAs are running in the online version, ads are running in the broadcast version. The reason for it is that, according to union contracts establish years ago with content providers, stations pay additional fees for running ads in their feeds. Before you can say for sure that the ads have been pulled, be sure to check the regular broadcast.
- BadIdeaSociety
  
  This is probably true. I was listening to some radio broadcasts not Rush through internet streaming overseas and often, when there live stream went to commercials (at that time) there were only AdCouncil commercials and then an awful lot of dead air. The other advertisers would be broadcast on the terrestrial radio signal, but the advertisers who didn’t pay for streaming ads would just not play or there would be an AdCouncil commercial instead.
  
  I e-mailed the station at the time and that was their explanation.
- xyzzy123
  
  Yep. The posted story seems to be rather misleading (unfortunately). To quote from the second diary:
  
  “The only ads that matter are the ads that are heard over the air. What airs on a radio station’s stream is irrelevant. …
  
  “Because of that [licensing] fee, most radio stations block out their ad content from their streams, replacing it with public service announcements (PSAs), filler music and dead air.
  
  “That’s what Media Matters was hearing today on WABC, but they were hearing it because they were listening to the stream. Unfortunately, that’s not what listeners to WABC over the radio were hearing, and it doesn’t mean that Rush has lost all his advertisers…at least not yet.
  
  “I have confirmed (it’s nice to know people who know people) that the ad breaks on 770 AM were filled with a full complement of local and national advertising, and I really wish I weren’t the bearer of that particular bad news. (It did seem almost too good to be true, didn’t it?)”
  
  http://www.dailykos.com/story/2012/03/08/1072617/-The-most-important-thing-you-re-going-to-read-all-day-about-Rush-s-ads?via=blog_581708
IamInnocent

Nice: hopefully this is not the result of a campaign, otherwise who on the right will retaliate the same way to silence someone that they don’t like… there was even an episode of WKRP on these tactics once, long ago, in saner times.
- GawainLavers
  
  Million Prairie Moms, or whatever the hell they are, try that constantly, with little success. If your goal is overt politics (much less hate-the-gay), you’ll get little traction. If your goal is common decency…
Stooge

Anyone know who the two advertisers that haven’t jumped ship are?
- GawainLavers
  
  Meanwhile, a few companies are stepping up to support Limbaugh’s show: SeekingArrangement.com, a company that bills itself “the world’s largest sugar daddy and sugar baby dating website,” announced its decision to start advertising on Limbaugh’s show late Tuesday, while the CEO of Ashley Madison, an online dating service website, said on CNN Wednesday morning that he is “willing to step into the void left by other advertisers.”
  
  http://dyn.politico.com/printstory.cfm?uuid=197C3F3C-6C88-4EE7-B0BA-5D9F95BABBED
  - http://twitter.com/thenotoriousmlp TheNotoriousMLP
    
    I believe one is a small business group that has a one year contract in place.
  - Ipo
    
    That’s alright then.
    Ditto-heads deserve this chance of finding Love.
    Maybe that will make them happier people and not constantly artificially angry and outraged.
    - Brainspore
      
      Ditto-heads deserve this chance of finding a partner.
      
      Ashley Madison is a dating service for people who are already in a relationship but want to have an illicit affair. For reals.
      - twianto
        
        ‘Illicit?’
      - Brainspore
        
        @twianto:disqus : Illicit in the “I want to keep this secret because it violates accepted social norms and my marriage vows” sense, not in the “illegal” sense.
      - twianto
        
        How about “I want to keep this secret because I want to keep this secret?”
- http://twitter.com/fossilfuels Funk Daddy
  
  Apparently some of the crazed people who often mimic Rush L. are stepping up. Michelle Malkin has tweeted that her new thing http://www.twitchy.com will buy ad space during Rush L.’s show.
  
  I haven’t clicked it yet, just saw the tweet, but given the name I expect it is an online store for stovetop crank enthusiasts and amateur meth cookers. Starter kits, extra sudafed, Breaking Bad DVD’s, stolen bicycles and other delicacies relished by twitchy tweeters that follow Malkin.
jennybean42

I thought Dead Air was a fineable offense by the FCC? is that only in some places?
- BadIdeaSociety
  
  I think the internet stream is exempt from that rule. Most stations will run station IDs if there is dead air.
  - foobar
    
    Wasn’t this a recording of the New York broadcast?
    - BadIdeaSociety
      
      It is certainly possible. From what I had understood the recording was from the NY affiliate taken from that station’s live stream, but I don’t know.
- IronEdithKidd
  
  For broadcast radio, dead air used to be a fineable. Though, it’s been a mighty long time since my college radio days, things may have changed.
Cowicide

Thank you, Mark, for covering this. Right wing radio is one of the most underestimated contributors to the ignorant, toxic downfall of the United States in modern history.

If you have a dumbass, conservative friend that believes lots of FUD (and votes based off said bullshit); You can thank right wing radio for most of it.
bardfinn

#INCLUDE STD_DISCLMR
#INCLUDE !ATTORNEY_DISCLAIMER

Re: leader line
Only if Rush identifies such sequences as performances of 4:33.
http://www.facebook.com/geoblackgeo George Black

People should contact the Ad Council and ask that they not allow their public service ads to be aired on the Limbaugh show.

The man ridicules public service, why allow it to save his ass?
- Jer_00
  
  I don’t think that the Ad Council gets a say, because the time for PSAs is donated by the station rather than paid for by the Ad Council.
  
  And that’s why stations are loading them up on Limbaugh’s show right now. Because they’ve promised time for them somewhere, and if they’ve got a big chunk of air time that is dead, running the PSAs that they have already pledged to run is better than running nothing.
  - EvilSpirit
    
    So what if the station donates the time? That doesn’t give them a license to what is undoubtably someone else’s copyright.
- http://twitter.com/martchand Martain Chandler
  
  I will boycott public service if this keeps up!
http://noctilucent-studios.blogspot.com/ Noctilucent Studios

Interesting…19 comments in and no one seems to have picked up on the Cage comment. I am going to wait exactly 4:33 and then see if that changes.
- Antinous / Moderator
  
  Your hopes for cultural literacy are sadly unfounded.
- UFIA
  
  It’s written for piano.
  I can play that.
  - princeminski
    
    I can’t play the piano so I perform it on guitar in my Humanities class. Passive aggression directed at the students who are forced to take the class.
Martha Bridegam

I guess Richard Nixon’s estate can get in line behind Cage’s.
F_Randy_Hullabaloo

Rush has been dead air for a long time, those are the parts where he’s talking.
liquidstar

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xeW-AMP87PM
Daniel Smith

Being that the US is short attention span theater, I will be very surprised if the public sense of outrage lasts long enough to see Limbaugh to the curb. Damn the bad luck.