That’s what we’ve heard from RBR-TVBR sources. With all of the hype lately that Huckabee is going to replace Rush at many Cumulus stations and will be pitched heavily against Rush to his affiliates, we’ve heard about a bit of a rough patch behind the Cumulus-Huckabee history. Here’s what happened: Cumulus was running the short-form “The Huckabee Report” and was in negotiations with Huckabee to renew. Then those negotiations didn’t go very well because Huckabee found out from Fox News sources that Cumulus had a deal in the works with Bill O’Reilly to do the daily features. It had become common knowledge at Fox News last Fall that O’Reilly was doing a deal with Cumulus because of O’Reilly’s relationship with former Westwood One SVP/Affiliate Sales Dennis Green (now Cumulus SVP of Affiliate Sales and Broadcast Operations)–possibly replacing Huckabee. This was part of the rumor that was circulating.
When Huckabee found out about it he was none too happy with Cumulus and called Cumulus CEO Lew Dickey. O’Reilly ended up going to Courtside, which was already doing his Town Hall specials. Huckabee then used that to his advantage in negotiations for the new deal with Cumulus.
Cumulus COO John Dickey tells RBR-TVBR: “Working with Gov. Huckabee or any other talent in our stable at the network, there’s always a bid and an ask. Those things either narrow and work out or they don’t. Obviously, we’re very excited about the deal we’ve got, as we’ve renewed our deal with Gov. Huckabee and expanded it. The process of how we got there, to me, is not an issue. The issue is we’re there, we believe in him and the marketplace is reflecting that with almost 200 affiliates.”
O’Reilly, who was with Westwood One, moved over to Courtside at the end of his contract because of his friendship with Courtside CEO Norm Pattiz and possibly because of more money.
Not so, says Dickey: “He’s got a special relationship with Norm and did Norm cut him a better deal? No. Norm doesn’t have a balance sheet and a platform to cut him a better deal. Common sense dictates that with almost 600 stations [that we have]. There’s nobody, short of Clear Channel, that’s going to be in a better position to get aggressive on a talent, given how we can amortize that aggressiveness across a platform.”
He adds, “So our decision was never about one person over another, it was about arriving at a deal that made sense for both parties—which we did—we’re very excited and we’re marching together into this new venture and we’ve got a long-term commitment to one another.”
He also gave us the overall game plan he’s offering to affiliates. Listen to the audio, below:
[audio:John-Dickey-040212.mp3|titles=John Dickey, Cumulus COO]
We also heard Huckabee got the vignettes and the long form show (2/9) for the same amount of money negotiated for the vignettes alone. The timing was great, too, with the Rush-Sandra Fluke fiasco.
RBR-TVBR observation: Radio is show business and show business is about egos and money. Regardless of how the deal came about, it is now going to be up to Mike Huckabee to deliver the ratings which will translate into dollars for Cumulus.
