Czabe has a truly radical suggestion: Newspapers should get out of the internet altogether and be print-only.

It’s so crazy it just might work! Surely someone should at least experiment with it, no? What’s the worst that could happen?

The carefully orchestrated elevation of Rush Limbaugh to Grand High Muckety Muck of the Republican party is a confluence of interests. It’s in the interest of the Obama administration to have Limbaugh as a foil and it’s in Limbaugh’s interest to be seen as such.

Without taking a side in the question of whether or not Limbaugh fairly represents the face of the Republican party, I’m interested in a notion which everyone involved–even Republicans who object to Limbaugh–seems to stipulate to: That Limbaugh wields enormous influence. Is that true? Does Limbaugh really matter in any important way?

I don’t mean to be churlish. My own tastes in talk radio run exclusively toward sports talk, so I’ve listened to Limbaugh very little. On the few occasions I have listened to him–maybe 30 hours, total–he wasn’t my particular cup of chamomile. But really, who cares what I think? He has lots of listeners and plenty of professional radio people seem to believe that Limbaugh is very good at what he does.

Yet I’m not convinced that either of those things mean Limbaugh is influential.

Let’s take Limbaugh’s large daily audience. I’d argue that raw audience size is a very imperfect indicator of influence.

Consider television. From 1998 to 2005, Everybody Loves Raymond was among the top 15 rated shows on TV. For five of those years it was in the top 10. It averaged 17.4 million viewers. Was Everybody Loves Raymond influential? I would argue that the show left a very small–maybe non-existent–cultural footprint.

If you sift through the Nielsens from recent years, you’ll find a number of highly-rated shows pulling in tens of millions of viewers, which were basically invisible after the credits rolled. This is true even at the very top of the heap: CSI and Home Improvement each finished #1 overall and yet, had they been canceled in the middle of their ratings dominance, I doubt anyone would have noticed.

That said, sometimes high ratings are an indication of influence. American Idol has been the top-rated show for the last four years and might be one of the most influential programs in the history of the medium. My point, however, is that it’s a mistake to assume that raw audience equals influence. You often see small shows (The Sopranos, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Battlestar Galactica) creating much larger (and longer-lasting) impacts than shows which draw many times their audiences.

So if the size of Limbaugh’s audience isn’t the determining factor of his influence, what is? Well, I’ll assume that Limbaugh can send a crowd of people toward a weblink if he mentions it on his program or his website. But crashing a server doesn’t take all that much. Slashdot and Boing Boing can do that, too. Can Limbaugh sell books? I’m not being pedantic–I honestly don’t know the answer to this question. But if Limbaugh really is influential, then the mere mention of books he likes ought to be enough to routinely put them high on the NYT’s best seller list for weeks, the way Oprah Winfrey’s approval does.

But for the purposes of this discussion–political power–we have pretty good recent examples of Limbaugh’s influence. I understand that Limbaugh (and other conservative talk-radio hosts) weighed in heavily against the Bush immigration deal. That deal failed. But was this because of Limbaugh? Maybe. But presumably Limbaugh was against a great number of other Bush initiatives that passed–No Child Left Behind, Medicare prescription drugs, the omnibus energy bill, the Detroit bailout. (I’m just guessing here; if I’m incorrectly ascribing views to Limbaugh, I apologize in advance.)

The 2008 primary season provided a particularly good indication of Limbaugh’s level of influence. He seems to have supported Mitt Romney. Despite Limbaugh’s support, Romney received only 4.7 million votes. The candidate Limbaugh favored least and argued against most–John McCain–won the nomination. Again, I’m not a devotee of Limbaugh’s show, but my sense is that Limbaugh made his distaste for McCain very apparent. Republican primary voters paid little heed.

After the Romney flame-out, Limbaugh began promoting what he called “Operation Chaos,” where he instructed listeners to vote for Hillary Clinton in Democratic primaries. Limbaugh claimed a good deal of credit for her subsequent victories, but I’ve never seen any data which suggests that his influence was significant, let alone decisive. To the contrary, almost all of the Democratic primary results–both before and after “Operation Chaos”–fit within a stable racial, socio-economic model.

Finally, in the general election, I presume that Limbaugh favored (to some degree) McCain over Obama. Again, Limbaugh’s influence failed to materialize.

I’m open to the argument that Limbaugh is influential; but I don’t think there’s a prima facie case for it. On the contrary, I’d argue that the evidence suggests Limbaugh is an expert entertainer in a medium with a small cultural, intellectual, and political footprint. He has very little influence in the world of ideas. And when it comes to actually energizing the masses toward action, his record is, at best, mixed.

Limbaugh’s powers of influence seem more on the level of Howard Stern. At his peak, Stern drew about 13 million listeners, which is in the ballpark with the 14 million or so Limbaugh has drawn through most of this decade. Like Limbaugh, Stern was credited with having a great deal of influence on his listeners. But that influence never really materialized beyond his ability to get people to tune in to a show he was giving away for free. Stern’s one attempt at translating his influence to the movies failed–the 1997 Howard Stern’s Private Parts opened to $14 million and grossed only $40 million. And when Stern moved to subscription-based satellite radio, his audience let him go without a second thought.

Or is it? Galley Brother B.J. sends word that Netflix stocks an R-rated version of the big-budget porntacular Pirates II.

I understand that porn producers shoot lots of different versions of every film. I think it was in a New Yorker story about the industry a few years ago that a producer from one of the big houses compared, in a very unsettling way, his company to the indians Native Americans, saying that they used every single scrap of the buffalo.

But how do you get an R-rating for material spliced down from hard-core?

The Pig sends along this story suggesting that the NHL is already in trouble. He gives a rundown of the most vulnerable franchises–here’s a taste:

ATLANTA

This could be a blueprint of how not to operate an expansion franchise. General manager Don Waddell is by all accounts a lovely man but he has become the Inspector Clouseau of the NHL. Despite having prime draft picks every year the Thrashers rank even below the much-maligned Maple Leafs in player development.

The Hockey News recently ranked the Thrashers 23rd in prospects. And, when they did get a solid player, Waddell has lost him. In eight seasons, the team still is looking for its first playoff game victory.

The team’s fan base has eroded. Attendance dropped another 7.9% the first half of this season — second biggest drop in the NHL. It has cash flow problems which hasn’t been helped by a collective agreement that forces it to spend at least $41-million.

Nobody really knows if Atlanta would support an NHL team because, in all honesty, it never has had one of NHL calibre.

If the NHL bought out the owners and folded the team it would be considered a mercy killing. Or, if a less desperate solution is more to Bettman’s liking: Keep the team; fold Waddell.

NASHVILLE

A 27 % share of the Predators got tied up in minority owner William Del Biaggio’s bankruptcy hearings. Del Baggio has been accused in three lawsuits of providing forged documents to financial institutions to land multimillion dollar loans that he has not repaid. Del Biaggio is just the latest NHL owner being fitted for a pinstripe suit courtesy of the U.S. government. The NHL may lead all of pro sports in the number of owners who could audition for a starring role on Judge Judy.

Meantime, the team can’t score on the ice, or with fans. Management revealed it considered buying thousands of unsold tickets so it can qualify for a full share of the NHL’s revenue sharing plan. Through 22 home games, the Predators’ average paid attendance was 256 tickets short of the 14,000 average required for a full share of the revenue-sharing pool that netted the team $12 million last season.

The plan gives small-market clubs money that the NHL collects from the 10 highest-earning teams. The amount franchises receive falls if certain attendance figures aren’t achieved.

Predators lead owner David Freeman made an estimated $50 million selling a medical waste disposal business. So, when it comes to waste you’d think an expert like Freeman would recognize it even if it was disguised as a hockey team. But, he says his reputation as a businessman is at stake, and he wants to make hockey work here. So, as for Jim Balsillie buying and moving the team?

“There is no Plan B,” Freeman said.

Pity.

How bad will things get with pro sports? No one knows. My guess is that, in the median-variant scenario a bunch of minor leagues (WNBA, Arena, MLS, MLL) fold, NASCAR retrenches from its quasi-mainstream status, and the NHL loses a franchise (or two).

One of the things that interests me a lot is what happens to the PGA. I don’t know a ton about the tour, but it seems heavily reliant on financial services sponsors. If that’s true, then that money should dry up pretty fast and, even in an economic recovery, may not return for some time. What does golf do? Cut back tour stops? Cut back purses as they rely more on TV and gate revenue? Is there enough interest in the LPGA to keep that tour going?

I haven’t heard it myself, but Hugh Hewitt says that Rush Limbaugh’s address to CPAC “will be talked about for years and even decades.”

Must be some speech. I mean, there have probably only been–what?–three, maybe four, speeches from the last 35 years that could fit such a description and all of them were by presidents. (I’m thinking Reagan’s Goldwater infomercial; Carter’s malaise speech; and then Reagan in Berlin. Maybe you have others.)

So its kind of amazing that we get two generational, historic-grade speeches–Obama’s opus on race in America and Rush at CPAC–within just a few months of one another.

Galley Friend P.G. sends along this Bill Simmons column about the economic future of the NBA and, if Simmons’ reportage and math is to be trusted (this isn’t a dig–I really have no idea), then the immediate future looks grim.

Always late to everything, I offer up this under-appreciated gem: the FX series Damages.

Caught the first three episodes last night. It’s very, very good. Crazy good.

But don’t take my word for it–you can check out the entire first season for free on Hulu.

A week or so ago, Pioneer announced that it was leaving the plasma market. Vizio is out of the plasma market too and now there’s word that LG may abandon plasma as well.

I wish that someone–maybe Santino?–would write a big reporting piece explaining what this all means. So far as I can tell, plasma is technically superior to LCD (though the gap has narrowed) and is competitive, maybe even better, price wise. So why is LCD outselling plasma 8-1?

On first blush, I wonder if this has something to do with computer displays: Maybe having a built-in manufacturing base for all of those LCD computer displays gives LCD a giant edge in production costs? Though that only matters for manufacturers, not consumers.

For my own part, I love my Pioneer plasma set and have no plans to replace it until I leapfrog into an OLED.