Huckabee is being pitched as the 'safe alternative' to Limbaugh. | AP Photos Huckabee takes aim at Limbaugh

Rush Limbaugh, the longstanding undisputed king of conservative talk radio who’s been dogged by controversy recently, is about to face some more heat. Not from the left, but this time from the right.

On Monday, former Arkansas governor and one-time Republican presidential candidate Mike Huckabee will launch a three-hour radio program on almost 200 stations across the country, going voice-to-voice with Limbaugh in the noon-to-3 p.m. time slot, Monday through Friday.


Cumulus Media, which owns and operates the new program, is already pitching Huckabee to listeners and advertisers as the “safe alternative” to a man who has recently found himself under weeks of intense fire - not for the first time - and who some believe could be vulnerable to a challenge from someone offering a kinder, gentler conservative voice.

“Our tagline is, ‘More conversation, less confrontation’,” Huckabee told POLITICO. “I’m going to treat every guest with respect and civility. Nobody is going to come on and get into a shouting match with me. That’s just not my style.”

Making a direct comparison with Limbaugh, John Dickey, the co-COO of Cumulus Media, adds, “This is going to be safer from a commercial standpoint, and more respectful from a listener’s perspective. I think that environment has been sorely lacking in talk radio.”

While representatives of “The Rush Limbaugh Show,” a Clear Channel property, and its syndicator, Premiere Networks, agree Huckabee will, in fact, offer a “safer” alternative, they strongly reject any suggestion that he poses a threat to Limbaugh’s audience and enormous influence. In their eyes, Huckabee is just the latest in a long line of would-be competitors who have never been able to measure up.

“There is no alternative to Rush Limbaugh — he is an original,” said Julie Talbott, Premiere’s president of Content and Affiliate Relations. “He has maintained his success through his unique brand of talk radio [that is] compelling, thought-provoking, and strikes an emotional cord. Historically, lukewarm, ‘safer’ content isn’t what attracts and retains audiences.”

“Baseball is a more interesting game when you play it, rather than talk about it. So is radio,” Limbaugh spokesperson Brian Glicklich told POLITICO. “Rush Limbaugh’s box score extends back decades, right to today. We’ll look forward to Huckabee’s first one.”

( See Also: 10 little-known facts about Limbaugh)

A Premiere spokesperson declined POLITICO’s request to speak with Limbaugh.

Huckabee, who has never met Limbaugh, does indeed join a long list of conservative voices who have gone up against Limbaugh in the noon time slot, competing for pull among the base of the Republican party. The most well-known of those now-vanished competitors is Fox News personality Bill O’Reilly, who hosted the nationally syndicated show, “The Radio Factor,” for seven years and became the second-most listened-to talk radio host on the airwaves. In 2009, O’Reilly was replaced by former Sen. Fred Thompson, who — like Huckabee — was trumpeted as an alternative to Limbaugh, but was never able to get traction. He ended the show last year.

“As Fred Thompson discovered, Rush Limbaugh completely dominates talk radio every day from noon to 3. If history is any guide, Huckabee will probably have a lot of trouble pulling away Rush’s loyal listeners,” one GOP consultant told POLITICO. “Rush is influential because of the size and engagement of his listeners. If he criticizes a Republican [officeholder], that office’s phones will be shut down for days with angry callers. Mike Huckabee will not have that sort of audience.”

Republican campaign strategist Steve Schmidt sees Huckabee’s trajectory differently.

“Rush Limbaugh has been on top for so long, he’s very good at what he does, and his audience listens to him. But he’s a polarizing figure in the larger culture,” Schmidt, a former advisor to John McCain, told POLITICO. “[Huckabee] is conservatism with a smile, which is a big difference in a party where the message is so often delivered angrily.”

Schmidt also believes Huckabee will prosper, at least in part, because of continuing speculation about his political future.

“Mike Huckabee is ready to be president of the United States,” Schmidt said. “He has maintained electoral viability while maintaining his media career. The fact that he’s now going to have a big audience and a daily platform, and that he delivers a conservative message without a lot of venom and bile, will be a benefit.”

Huckabee’s name is occasionally mentioned as a possible vice presidential nominee, but when asked whether there was a clause in his contract with Cumulus that would allow him to pursue such a bid, he dismissed the possibility. “It’s like the old saying, ‘Don’t go buy a corsage if you haven’t been invited to the prom yet’,” he said. “Nobody has talked to me about being on anybody’s ticket, and I’m not anticipating it.”

While political insiders debate Huckabee’s influence with conservatives vis-a-vis Limbaugh, industry insiders caution against pitting the two shows against one another. If anything, they argue, Huckabee’s entrance into the market is more likely to broaden talk radio’s audience than to diminish Limbaugh’s.

“This isn’t an election, it’s an industry. There’s room for both, just like there’s room for Letterman and Leno,” Michael Harrison, the publisher of Talkers, the talk radio magazine, told POLITICO. “Yes, every competitor hurts Limbaugh. But Huckabee is basically just another competitor. If he takes a little away from Limbaugh, fine. But he also has the potential to expand the talk radio audience.”

Or, as Huckabee puts it: “In the supermarket, there’s an aisle for cereal, and there’s probably more than one box in the cereal section. Not everybody wants Cheerios. Some people want Frosted Flakes — though I’m not saying that I’m the Frosted Flakes, maybe that’s a terrible metaphor.”

Limbaugh’s show appears on 600 stations and averages 20 million listeners a week, according to Premiere. Huckabee will launch with a third of the stations that Limbaugh has, and in several markets Huckabee’s show will not air live, which will hurt ratings. In fact, Cumulus syndicates Limbaugh’s show from Premiere on roughly 35 stations, and Dickey says it will be another 12 to 15 months before they consider replacing that time slot with Huckabee’s show.

“The marketplace will speak, and we’ll see how the governor does,” Dickey said. “Obviously, we’ve got a much deeper financial relationship with the governor than with Rush Limbaugh, where we’re just paying for product. So, all things being equal, we’ve got a greater incentive to do business with our own.”

While many will look to Huckabee’s early numbers and quickly judge his performance against Limbaugh after a few weeks, the real effects won’t be measurable for quite some time.

“This is not like a movie where we have the first weekend numbers and we get a sense of whether or not it’s going to be a hit or not,” Tom Taylor, the News Editor of Radio-Info.com, told POLITICO. “This is a very long-term thing. It took Rush a long time to figure out his act and build an audience, and that will be true for Huckabee.”

“It will take some time,” Dickey acknowledged. “Rush obviously still has a very large following, and he’s very prolific, and he’s been doing this for a very long time. But if we’re starting with a third of the stations and we haven’t cracked Show One yet — I’ve got a lot of faith in the governor.”

Indeed, 200 stations is an impressive start for Huckabee. When he and Cumulus first began talking about the show, they anticipated launching with 50 stations. Huckabee is also helped by his experience on Fox News, where he hosts the Saturday and Sunday night “Huckabee” show, and by the short radio segments he’s been doing since 2008.

But some of the hype surrounding Huckabee’s new program must be credited to the controversy surrounding Limbaugh, who was heavily criticized in the national media for statements he made in late February about Georgetown law student Sandra Fluke. Huckabee and Cumulus did not see those events unfolding when they started discussing a full-length radio program last year, but it is certainly something they have taken advantage of while marketing the program. (Huckabee called it “serendipitous”; Dickey referred to it as “providential.”)

The strategy at Cumulus is to draw a very clear line between the Limbaugh model and the Huckabee model, and while Huckabee is more reserved about that comparison, Dickey speaks in no uncertain terms.

“Rush is talking to his audience, the governor is going to be talking with his audience. That’s a huge difference,” Dickey said. “Rush talks to people. Some might argue that he yells at people. Some might argue that he badgers people. I don’t know.”

Huckabee declines to talk about Limbaugh directly — “I’m not going into this with the intention of saying, ‘Ok, what does somebody else do, let me do something different’,” he says — though he does describe his forthcoming program, which, unlike Limbaugh’s show, will include extensive interviews and conversations with guests, as an alternative to “confrontational radio.”

“If I tried to do what I call ‘confrontational radio,’ I would be a miserable failure at it,” Huckabee said. “That’s not who I am. I never did that even when I ran for office. I was not the kind of person who went out to debates and tore somebody’s jugular right out of their neck.”

Even while discussing the topics he intends to cover on the program — not just politics but also pop culture, entertainment, and religion — Huckabee gives some indication that he sees himself as an alternative to Limbaugh, who is known for getting worked up on the air, at times until he turns beet red.

“I think there’s more to life than politics,” Huckabee said. “I really feel sorry for people who get so obsessed that their blood pressure goes up 20 points on the systolic because all they do is sit around and make themselves angry and crazy, thinking about things they don’t like.”

“I’m an optimistic person. I love this country, and I’m thrilled that I’ve had the opportunities I’ve had,” he continues. “But rather than get angry about the things that have happened in this country, I prefer to approach it in a fun kind of way, rather than ridiculing somebody. And I don’t think that’ll ever happen. In fact, another tagline that will characterize the show is, ‘We will confront the issues and not the listeners’.”

But the strategy of positioning Huckabee as an alternative to Limbaugh ultimately could backfire as the national media and advertisers look to judge Huckabee and Cumulus in relation to Limbaugh, who has much greater market share.

“They’re kind of digging a hole for themselves, because now everyone is going to be looking to measure audience and say, ‘How is he performing against Rush?’” one person close to the Limbaugh show told POLITICO. “They’re placing a very, very big bet.”

Cumulus won’t necessarily gain much ground from Limbaugh’s recent controversy, either. Despite efforts by watchdog organizations like Media Matters For America, to get affiliates and advertisers to drop Limbaugh’s show following the Fluke controversy, the actual advertising losses are likely significantly less than was initially portrayed. While some advertisers (at least 100) did leave Limbaugh’s show, most of those were local, and some have either returned or are planning to return.

“[R]eports of sponsors fleeing ‘The Rush Limbaugh’ Show are grossly exaggerated,” Premiere’s Talbott said. “In fact, the program retains virtually all of its long-term sponsors who continue to have great success with ‘The Rush Limbaugh Show.’”

Meanwhile, the national media’s focus on Limbaugh has diminished significantly, and the notion of a “safer” alternative may not be as compelling to advertisers and affiliates as it was just a few weeks ago.

“This Sandra Fluke thing will pass, and the important question for Huckabee will be, ‘Can he make it on the air whether Limbaugh is there or not?’” said Harrison, the publisher of Talkers. “I don’t believe any of that success will come at the expense of Limbaugh. Because even if he made a dent in Limbaugh, Limbaugh still can succeed and continue.”

Barring some new unforeseen controversy, Limbaugh will continue to reach his audience of 20 million listeners, and — at least in the immediate future — Huckabee will not pose a major threat to Limbaugh’s affiliates or his ratings, though that could change over time.

But there is little question that Huckabee will now be judged in the context of Limbaugh.

“This is the beginning of baseball season. Rush is the returning MVP. Huckabee is the guy who is trying to make it onto the team,” Radio-Info’s Taylor said. “He has a spot in the lineup, but this is Rush’s game. Rush invented this game over 20 years ago, and he’s still the master at it. What he does is a lot harder than you might think.”