Rush to the Right on TV : Limbaugh Moves to New Medium

Rush Limbaugh is sitting there in a den-like setting in his new, daily TV talk show that debuts Monday on KCOP-TV Channel 13 and other stations around the nation, and he is clearly relishing every moment.

It is a video of a rehearsal, and the phenomenally successful, conservative iconoclast of radio--and bane of liberals--is delivering just what you’d expect in his big move to the home screen in a half-hour program that is virtually a solo performance from beginning to end.

Love him, hate him, there is no getting around the fact that his radio show--now carried by more than 500 stations, with some 12 million listeners--is hypnotic because of his rollicking style, comic timing and polarizing political views. The question now is whether those qualities will translate to TV.

In the rehearsal tape, one of many that Limbaugh has made in recent weeks to hone his performance for television--where he will turn out programs for broadcast the same day--Limbaugh is on a roll:

“We don’t need to be balanced with equal time. The show doesn’t need to be balanced with equal time. I don’t need to be balanced with equal time.

“I am equal time.”

He elaborates: “Twenty-three hours and 30 minutes of the broadcast day comes from the left. Here’s this little old show, 30 minutes of right-thinking criticism.”

Naturally, Limbaugh touches on TV’s “Murphy Brown,” which Vice President Dan Quayle criticized because the lead character had a baby out of wedlock. The show is expected to rebuke Quayle in its season premiere Sept. 21, and Limbaugh urges viewers to tune in the series:

“Watch the show. You ought to see it. The difference this season is that after the show airs, you can watch this show. You know what’ll happen when you watch this show? You’ll find out what to think about what you saw on ‘Murphy Brown.’ We’re going to discuss it. . . . They’re not going to get away with this stuff this season because we are here.”

Limbaugh then lays into pessimism about the economy and the state of the union with the kind of insouciance that infuriates detractors who accuse him of being insensitive:

“Let me ask you a question. How are things for you? Got two cars in the garage? Got your television on, obviously. And how fortunate you are to have me on it. How much better could life be? Are you sitting around thinking about slitting your wrists? Do you want to move to Somalia?

“Well, we’re not out of opportunity in this country. . . . You have to follow the example of people who’ve found it. People like me. You can really do yourself a favor by trying to be more like me. Do you see me suffering? (Laughter on the set.) Here I am--prosperous, happy, satisfied and marvelous.”

In a phone interview this week from New York, where his series will be done, Limbaugh, exuding confidence, said the show will follow the lines of the rehearsals, although it might be altered a bit as time goes on. Plans include taking some calls from viewers and an occasional visitor.

But unless things change, the series, “Rush Limbaugh,” will be Rush Limbaugh--period.

“The afternoon talk shows are all the same, and the late-night shows are all the same,” he said. “You’ve got a band. You’ve got celebrity guests and you’ve got, basically, conservative-bashing: Make fun of Quayle. This is going to be the one show in America where Quayle won’t be made fun of.”

Added Limbaugh: “I’m not going to get celebrity guests. I’m politically incorrect with that crowd. They wouldn’t come on my show. And I don’t want to do that anyway.”

Limbaugh’s series has some heavyweights guiding it. The executive producer is Roger Ailes, who was a TV adviser to President Bush, Ronald Reagan and Richard Nixon. And the company syndicating the series, Multimedia Entertainment, also sells the talk shows of Phil Donahue and Sally Jessy Raphael.

A Multimedia representative says that Limbaugh’s series has lined up 183 stations covering about 95% of the nation and is “our single largest launch ever. It’s phenomenal to get that kind of clearance.”

Most of the stations will carry Limbaugh as a late-night entry around 11:30 or midnight. In Los Angeles, however, he has major obstacles to overcome. KCOP has scheduled him for 3:30 p.m., where his competition includes Donahue and Oprah Winfrey. Limbaugh will also be rerun at 1 a.m. the same night.

Is he satisfied with his broadcast hours here?

“One o’clock’s not the best time, but, hell, it’s Los Angeles, it’s the No. 2 market, I’m on the air there. I got a station that’s willing to take a chance on this. That’s tremendous. I applaud them. They’re running it also at 3:30 in the afternoon. They’re exposing it to two different audiences.

“They’re going to find out where it airs best, and I guarantee you they’re going to put it where it does the best after they find out what it is.”

Predicting success, Limbaugh said: “The TV managers and the TV programmers are just as afraid as the radio guys were at first, and they’re going to say: ‘This show’s got to prove itself. We don’t know what this guy’s going to do. Oh my God, what kind of horror is going to be visited on America because of this guy?’ ”

Limbaugh, of course, is arriving on television at the height of the presidential election campaign. Is he going to bear down even harder on the race because of his influence?

“If warranted, I will. (But) the purpose of this show is not to get anybody elected. And I’ll tell you flat-out that the success of my show is not going to be determined by who wins the election. It’s going to be determined by how many people watch it.

“I’m not doing this to reshape America into what I think it should be.”

Really?

“No. This is show biz.

“It doesn’t influence policy. Look at (Pat) Buchanan. He finally discovered that he had to run for President if he really wanted to make a difference in the context you mean it. He was in (his) newspaper columns and on ‘Crossfire’ every night for all those years saying what he thought.”

What about the argument that any TV show, fiction or reality, from “Murphy Brown” to “Rush Limbaugh,” inevitably has an impact on viewers?

“Yeah, but here’s the difference: I will admit to you what I’m trying to do. I will admit to you that, yes, I’m conservative--and that if people end up agreeing with me, that’s great. The people who do ‘Murphy Brown’ are saying, ‘Come on. Don’t overreact. This is just a fictional character.’ ”

Limbaugh said that Linda Bloodworth-Thomason, a TV adviser to Democratic presidential candidate Bill Clinton and producer of such series as “Designing Women,” makes no bones about using the show to advocate her beliefs. A “Designing Women” episode last season dealt with the Clarence Thomas-Anita Hill hearings and was unquestionably more critical of the future Supreme Court justice.

Not long ago, there were reports that Bloodworth-Thomason had invited Limbaugh to do a guest shot on “Designing Women.” What happened?

Limbaugh said the producer--a fellow native of Missouri--called him: “We have mutual friends in Missouri. . . . She was struck by the similarities in the way we were brought up. She grew up in a town about an hour south of mine (and) found it amazing that I turned out the way I did and she turned out the way she did.”

The idea, Limbaugh said, was that he would be on this fall’s season premiere of “Designing Women,” meet the outspoken character Julia Sugarbaker and that after a while they would “mellow toward one another. I said, ‘This sounds great.’ ” However, he said, a planned meeting fell through because the producer was tied up.

In July, he said, an executive of the series called and said the idea for the episode was that he would come to Atlanta (the show’s setting) and challenge feminists--he calls them “feminazis”--to a debate: “I said nope. I don’t do that. I don’t go into towns and challenge women to debate.” And that, Limbaugh said, was the last he’s heard from the show.

Anyway, he added, “it’s probably wiser” not to do the series, at least now: “All that she (Bloodworth-Thomason) cares about right now is Bill Clinton being elected--which is fine. I don’t. It would be like sandpaper.”

Back at Limbaugh’s show, his plans are set.

Guests: If there is a guest, he said, “the guest will interview me.”

Studio audience? Just an invited few: “They have to wear coats and ties.”

Will he use TV to criticize TV as a conservative?

“Probably, but not on a regular basis. I do think that the dominant news organizations in this country that provide national news--the Washington Post, your paper, the New York Times, ABC, NBC, CBS and CNN--in their news coverage, not on their editorial pages and not on their commentary shows, do feature liberal bias, not true objectivity. That’s OK. . . . This is America, and I happen to think that a thinking, engaged human being cannot possibly be objective. It’s a nice goal, but it’s a difficult thing to pull off.”

His “only quarrel,” he said, is with journalists who “won’t admit” they are liberal and “slant the news”: “But I’m going to be out here saying, ‘I’m conservative and isn’t it wonderful there’s finally a show here where my point of view is heard?’ ”

As for the phone calls, they’ll be carefully screened: “The purpose of a call is to make me look good. This is not the First Amendment here. There’s no right to be boring on my show. This is a benevolent dictatorship.”