![]() (Prior to being hired as a spokesman, Rush had, in fact, been giving Snapple free plugs on his show on WABC, simply because he enjoyed the product.) At the time, Snapple had limited distribution, centered around the New York region. (And at $350 for a single read, he was effectively charging $21,000 per hour!)įor a number of years, Rush was a spokesman for Snapple beverages, along with shock jock Howard Stern. And he may well have preferred not to be endorsing this particular product, but once he started reading-and notice that he read it live in one take, zero mistakes-he made Cliff Wasem’s anti-oxidant enzyme formula for arthritis sufferers sound like a gift from above. Was that disdain in Rush’s voice, a sigh of exasperation when he said “here comes this… spot.” It felt like it. Within a week or so, during the daily closed-circuit feed to network stations, we received this: Cliff drafted his message, which we sent along with Cliff’s check to Rush. In fact, Cliff Wasem, who typically wrote and voiced his own commercials, asked me to find out what it would cost to have Rush voice a spot for him. Sachs became a regular advertiser in Rush’s show, as did Wasem’s Drug in Clarkston. I didn’t know anything about “Rush Limbo” then, and it wasn’t until he hit the airwaves in Pullman that Art reminded me that this was the guy he’d heard in California. Art had just returned from visiting relatives in California and he called to tell me about a show he’d heard on a Sacramento station. Sachs, Optometrist-he had offices both in Pullman (next to the Audian Theater) and Clarkston (above Wasem’s Drug). I recall getting a telephone call a year or so earlier from one of my advertising clients, Dr. KQQQ-AM here in Pullman, Washington was the first station in the Pacific Northwest-and one of the first 100 stations in the country-to carry Rush Limbaugh’s nationally syndicated program that began in August 1988. ![]() Heck, even his branded “No Boundaries” collection of neckties brought in over $5,000,000 in the first year they were offered. Such was his relationship with his vast audience, a relationship that cannot be quantified by the numbers alone: 27 million listeners, 600+ stations, and a compensation package worth more than the combined salaries of the big three network television personalities* at the time (Dan Rather, Peter Jennings, and Tom Brokaw, with Barbara Walters thrown in for good measure). Rush’s death was not unexpected, of course-he’d been frank with us about losing the battle he’d been waging against his lung cancer-but that didn’t make his absence any easier to embrace. Much more will be said in the weeks and months ahead, as his millions of listeners and fans mourn his passing and recall the impact he had on their lives. So much has been written and said about Rush Limbaugh recently in the wake of his death at age 70.
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