April 11, 2007
Imus Struggling to Retain Sway as a Franchise
By JACQUES STEINBERG
That Don Imus can be abrasive and offensive is undeniable, but he is also one of the most successful and influential pitchmen in the history of radio, if not broadcasting.

In the last few weeks, Mr. Imus has provided a forum for a Democratic presidential aspirant, Christopher J. Dodd, to announce his candidacy and promoted a book from Simon & Schuster (“Green This! Volume 1”) that his wife, Deirdre, wrote about cleaning products she conceived. He also pumped sales for a country singer, Martina McBride, and raised millions of dollars for an Army medical facility in Texas.

His program generates in excess of $20 million in annual revenue for CBS Radio, his primary employer, and his flagship New York station, WFAN, according to two people apprised of the show’s finances who spoke on condition of anonymity. When advertising revenue for affiliates and MSNBC, which simulcasts the program, is included, the figure exceeds $50 million.

But yesterday, the third day Mr. Imus spent asking for forgiveness for a racially disparaging remark about the Rutgers women’s basketball team, he demonstrated that the brand he was having the hardest time selling was his own.

His plea that the Rutgers team agree to hear his apology directly — a request he renewed yesterday during a live, combative interview on the “Today” program — was answered.

In a midday news conference at the Rutgers University athletic center in Piscataway, N.J., one player said that the team would soon meet privately with Mr. Imus.

Whether Mr. Imus can use the team’s gesture to help save his broadcasting career — he begins serving a two-week suspension on Monday — remains unclear. As CNN broadcast pictures of the players arrayed on a stage behind their coach, their faces long and at times streaked with tears, several prominent advertisers announced plans to distance themselves from the talk show host.

Staples, the office supply chain, as well as Miralus Healthcare, a pharmaceutical company that makes a headache medication called HeadOn, said yesterday that they had asked MSNBC to remove their advertising from the television simulcast of Mr. Imus’s radio program and run their commercials elsewhere.

Some advertisers had left the Imus program before last week’s remarks. AT&T stopped advertising in January, and General Motors stopped its radio ads (though it still broadcasts TV commercials with the simulcast.)

Procter & Gamble went a step further yesterday. It said that, for now, it had withdrawn all its advertising from MSNBC’s daytime schedule — a potential loss of more than $560,000 on an annual basis for the Imus simulcast alone, according to figures from Nielsen Media Research.

“We have to think first about our consumers,” said Jeannie Tharrington, a spokeswoman for the consumer products manufacturer, “so anyplace where our advertising appears that is offensive to our consumers is not acceptable to us.”

Procter & Gamble’s response underscored a delicate balance that has existed on “Imus in the Morning” for years. For those who have been the beneficiaries of Mr. Imus’s largess, putting a product or a cause in his hands is not unlike a spin of the roulette wheel. Sometimes, he will talk about someone after a thoughtful 12-minute interview of Senator John Kerry or Senator John McCain that is as substantive or illuminating as any on programs like “Meet the Press.”

Other times, he might sing a person’s praises after uttering an ill-considered remark or after a member of his supporting cast had done a scalding send-up of such regular targets as the embattled United States attorney general, Alberto Gonzales; the mayor of New Orleans, C. Ray Nagin; or Cardinal Edward Egan of New York.

“It’s a double-edged sword,” said Bo Dietl, a former New York police detective who appears weekly on the program to plug his private security business. “I do the show because the power of that show is enormous. But I’ve also lost a lot of business for being on that show.”

That said, the program, which draws an estimated two million listeners and viewers each day, is lucrative for Mr. Imus’s bosses, which could well be what saves him.

It is also lucrative for Mr. Imus — he earns an estimated $10 million a year, and has signed a five-year contract extension — and, at least until recently, his show had provided a lift to any number of ventures.

That may be at least partly why many of those who have gained from their associations with Mr. Imus — whether politically, financially or through the abundant publicity — were sticking by him yesterday, as he continued to lament his dismissal of the Rutgers team, most of whose members are black, as “nappy-headed hos.”

On the campaign trail, Rudolph W. Giuliani and Mr. McCain, two Republicans who have appeared on the program, said they found the comment wrong and offensive, but said they believed that Mr. Imus was sorry. Each said he intended to appear on the show again. “I called him a little while ago to talk to him about it personally,” Mr. Giuliani said. “And I believe that he understands he made a very big mistake.”

Mr. Kerry and Mr. Dodd issued statements criticizing Mr. Imus’s original remark, but sidestepped any question of whether they would go back on the show. Mr. Kerry noted his apology.

While expressing his disappointment in Mr. Imus’s remark about the Rutgers team, Peter Osnos, founder and editor at large of PublicAffairs books, said he hoped Mr. Imus would not lose his job — a punishment that the Rev. Al Sharpton, among others, has demanded.

“He’s not a philistine,” Mr. Osnos said. “He’s not a bigot. But he was a jerk.”

“I would prefer not to see him driven off the air,” added Mr. Osnos, who recently placed Mr. Kerry, co-author with his wife, Teresa, of “This Moment on Earth: Today’s New Environmentalists and Their Vision for the Future” on Mr. Imus’s show.

Indeed, outside of rare berths on “Today” or more frequent but still difficult to place bookings on “The Daily Show With Jon Stewart,” authors have access to few other broadcast arenas with the reach and influence of Mr. Imus.

In the wake of the firestorm over his remark, Mr. Imus has pledged to purge the most offensive humor from his program.

“In that spirit,” said Stuart Applebaum, a spokesman for Random House Inc., whose imprints include Random House, Doubleday, Crown and Knopf, “our publishers will also evaluate their future advertising commitments for the program.”

Similar internal discussions are under way elsewhere.

Lumber Liquidators, a hardwood flooring company in Virginia, said its agreement to sponsor portions of Mr. Imus’s radio show was coming up for renewal, after its initial year. Tom Sullivan, the company’s chairman and founder, said that as recently as a few weeks ago, its continued association with Mr. Imus would have been a sure thing. Now, he said, he was unsure.

“I’ve been thinking about it the last few days,” he said in a telephone interview. “My girlfriend is black and she said not to do it.”

Nonetheless, he said he might well extend the contract, at least partly because advertising on Mr. Imus’s program had brought him new business, especially from customers in the New York area with high incomes.

Ultimately, whether Mr. Imus returns to radio and television after his suspension — and if so for how long — could rest with advertisers like Mr. Sullivan, and of listeners.

“My bet is he survives,” said Larry Gerbrandt, senior vice president and media analyst for Nielsen Analytics. “I think it’s the principle here. You can’t let third parties decide corporate policy.”

He added, “If the notoriety pushes up his ratings, he could even come out ahead.”

If the calculation were purely financial, both CBS Radio and MSNBC would have strong incentive to keep the program.

Beyond the rights fee it pays to CBS Radio to simulcast the program — about $4 million a year — the MSNBC show costs the network only about $500,000 a year, which is a modest expense for a three-hour daily program. If the channel had to replace the show with three hours of regular news coverage, “it would cost far more money than that to produce” an MSNBC executive said.

And CBS Radio could little afford to lose Mr. Imus’s cash stream, as it continues to reel from both the defection of Howard Stern to Sirius Satellite Radio and the failure of its efforts to institute a standardized format (known as Jack-FM) across the country.

And yet Mr. Dietl, the former detective, said he worried about the appeal of an Imus program without humor.

“If you handcuff him and just take away the entertainment,” Mr. Dietl said, “it’ll just become like any other talk show.”

Bill Carter, Sarah Abruzzese, Jeff Leeds, Motoko Rich, Marc Santora, Louise Story, Sarah Wheaton and Jeff Zeleny contributed reporting.