Anyone with an IQ above room temperature has to wonder what’s up Matthew Drudge’s nose these days besides his finger. The 35 year old ex-flower shop clerk and “Winchell wannabe” is having a devil of a time finding any story with meat. Stories about two headed billy goats and cloned monkeys are rather passé nowadays except for those moronic individuals who insist upon hitting his website at least five times a day. Such noble degeneracy keeps Matthew at the top of the heap in web traffic, even if he has nothing to offer but purloined stories from other publications. Then too, ratcheting up any hysteria around the Hollywood sleaze circuit has been harder to come by ever since (Matthew’s left coast scooper) “Tinseltown tell-all”, Julia Phillips, decided to check out permanently in January.
Never fear however, Matthew has lots of friends in the know who thinks he is the greatest investigative journalist since Woodard and Bernstein. Of course, we all know that Matthew is no journalist and has never investigated anything in his life. His name to fame (Lewinski/Clinton saga) was spoon fed to him by Lucianne Goldberg who got pissed off at Newsweek. Anyone who has followed this guy for any length of time soon realizes that most of what he reports is at the expense of someone else’s shoe leather. Supposed insiders provide the scoop via e-mail or phone and Matthew publishes it in rip and read fashion. Goldberg got smart though, she got her own website, radio talk show, and her kid a job over at National Review. What a country!
Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain
Matthew’s latest crop of apocalyptic headlines surrounds Bill O’Reilly’s new syndicated radio talk show on Westwood One. According to a reliable source, it was none other than Rush Limbaugh in November of last year who gave Matthew the scoop that O’Reilly was in negotiations for his own radio show. According to our source, an ABC exec alerted Limbaugh who helped formulate Matthew’s exclusive piece. “Limbaugh just can’t stand the fact that O’Reilly is doing so well with his TV show and that he failed at it. He is so egotistical, it is a wonder he doesn’t just implode all over that gold microphone of his. Now you have O’Reilly meeting him head on in 100 radio markets at the same time slot and he is damn scared. Rush is using Drudge as his hidden mouth piece and Drudge is going along with it because he owes him. Limbaugh is always cross promoting with Drudge. Whenever the King wants something known before the main stream press gets a whiff of it, he pipe lines it over to Drudge. That way he can tweak the story the way he wants it. Two peas in a pod… I got news for you, he’s not on loan from God…. he thinks he is God.”, our source said.
At the time, Matthew and Rush accused O’Reilly of plotting against Limbaugh because of his hearing loss. “The timing is God-awful,” said one executive. “Limbaugh’s listeners are loyal, they will see this as Bill O’Reilly ganging up on their man — while he is handicapped!”, according to the article. Telephoning from his vacation in the U.S. Virgin Islands O’Reilly said, “It’s pretty hot down here, but not as hot as I am after reading Matt Drudge … I just thought it was such a vicious, vicious assault by Matt Drudge on me, designed solely to hurt me, by the way – no other reason.” O’Reilly even explained to Matthew on his radio program that radio people have been after him for years to do a show. At the time, he stopped all radio negotiations until Limbaugh’s cochlear implant showed signs of reversing his problem.
That didn’t work, let’s try this
The two plotters were at it again this week. Trying to develop as much negative publicity about O’Reilly’s new talk show before it even began airing yesterday. In an apparent preemptive strike on Monday night’s Factor, O’Reilly had said, “I also told Drudge that he was being used by people who don’t want me on the radio dial for business reasons, and that’s a very interesting story. But at this point, it’s clear to me Drudge is going to just do everything he can to slam me. That’s fine, but don’t believe a word of it.”
What followed was Tuesday’s last ditch effort by the Rush/Matthew team in the big exclusive that read: O’REILLY RADIO SHOCKER: STATIONS PAID TO CARRY SHOW. Big deal! This writer, a former radio station owner in Peoria, Illinois can vouch for the fact that this is not exclusive news or rare. There are a lot of different formulas for carrying programming including trade outs, comps, and getting paid directly for airing them. This latest triumph isn’t news at all, but rather a splash to make O’Reilly look desperate and bad. According to Matthew’s piece, “Unlike his targeted radio competitor Rush Limbaugh, who has never paid stations to carry his broadcast, O’Reilly launches this week under a cloud of controversy”…..oh, really! What an asinine statement, it has Limbaugh’s prints all over it.
How entertaining!
Don Imus interviewed Bill O’Reilly on his morning program yesterday. What an interesting exchange:
IMUS: So then Matt Drudge has this story about Westwood One paying some radio stations to carry your program. And we laughed because that’s done all the time. It’s not a big deal. And half the time, the reason …… here’s the reason it’s done.
If you want to sell to advertisers you gotta be able to say to advertisers: All right, this program is on in, say, nine of the top 10 markets. If some of the top 10 markets you can’t get on a radio station, you go to them and you say, “We’ll pay you so much to run the program.” And then you sell the advertising and you still wind up making money.
So, I don’t know what Drudge’s point was, but it was a moot point. Anyway, why are you doing this?
O’REILLY: I just want to tell everybody that Matt Drudge is smoking crack – right now, in South Miami Beach on Washington Avenue, he has a pipe in his ear.
IMUS: He has his own pathetic little radio program that runs Sunday night someplace on some nothin’ station .
O’REILLY: And he smokes crack all during that program. And the authorities should know it.
IMUS: He’s probably upset with – he’s clearly upset with you.
O’REILLY: It’s a tragic situation. But it’s a disease, Mr. Imus. And there’s no cure other than to kill Matt Drudge. You know what the interesting story is here, you know, Drudge is the point man, but why are they trying to destroy the radio program, “The Factor” on the radio, before it even gets on the air? Just let it get on the air and then try to destroy it, you know. But they want to destroy it.
IMUS: Well, with a non-issue.
O’REILLY: It’s ridiculous.
IMUS: I mean, anybody who’s been around radio syndication for five minutes knows how it works.
O’REILLY: But you know, there’s a drive behind it. You know, it’s not just Drudge. It’s somebody feeding him stuff and [telling him] “Let’s try to do this.” But most people don’t care. They just want to listen to the radio program. If it’s fun to listen to, they’ll listen to it. If it isn’t, they won’t…….
Hey O’Reilly, listen up! The guy feeding him stuff is Rush Limbaugh. I know, he’ll just deny it and agent-brother David says we’re crazy. But remember, when the truth is known, don’t say we didn’t tell you.
It just keeps getting better
Later in the day, Westwood One’s Joel Hollander would flatly deny that affiliates were being compensated for carrying O’Reilly’s show:
“You can never believe what the newspapers write. We don’t pay comp for Bill O’Reilly. We pay comp on our radio networks. There was another personality at another network that is a little upset and jealous that he can’t get into prime time-and you’re going to see a lot of these articles written over the next month, two months, especially the day before launch. There’s not many times when you get to launch a show with 216 affiliates. Now, if we needed to pay comp to get on in a market where we were void and we had no other choice, we would consider doing that-but that is not something that we have to do at this point,” Hollander said.
Too bad Hollander lied and O’Reilly joked around with Imus. These guys don’t realize that they are dealing with a mad man and his keyboard. They played right into the pseudo muckraker’s hands. Sure enough, just as I am finishing writing this…. bingo! Tomorrow’s (today’s) Drudge Headline:
O’REILLY RAGE AFTER STATION PAYOUT IS REVEALED; WESTWOOD ONE THREATENS TO PULL CASH; FOX NEWS HOST ADVISES: ‘DRUDGE SHOULD BE KILLED’
So once again, Matthew keeps a non-story alive to feed his hungry naive audience and the man behind the curtain is laughing all the way to the golden microphone …. pity.