The three economists analyzed ratings for ABC-TV's "Monday Night Football" between 1997 and 2001 and found that "Monday Night Football games featuring black quarterbacks have Nielsen ratings 11% higher than otherwise identical games with two white starting quarterbacks."

... In his article, Vigdor attempts to use his study to discredit Limbaugh's views. "If Limbaugh had done any research on the subject, he would have learned that the media's desire to see black quarterbacks succeed is not rooted in 'a little social concern,' but rather in good old-fashioned attention to the bottom line." ...

At the same time as he is trying to distance himself from the congruence between his own findings and Limbaugh's views, Vigdor has removed the study itself from his Web site. Click here, where the study used to appear, and you get this message:...

Yahoo has it cached here, though it's a PDF file rendered as HTML, which makes it hard to read in places. A comment in this blog entry, dated Oct. 4, links to the page where the study appeared. It would appear Vigdor decided to suppress the study only when it was linked to the Limbaugh comments, and he now expects interested parties to rely on his tendentious anti-Limbaugh explanation rather than see for themselves what the study said.

To return to Eric Rasmusen's weblog, click http://php.indiana.edu/~erasmuse/w/0.rasmusen.htm.