Carbonite CEO: Limbaugh Ad Pullout Hurt Company, But 'Things Would Have Been Worse Had We Not Done That'

One of the many companies that pulled advertising from Rush Limbaugh's radio show said on Wednesday that the decision had hit his business hard, but that he knew it was the right one to make.

David Friend, CEO of Carbonite, made the comments in a call with investors after the company released its second quarter financial results. Carbonite, a software company, was the sixth advertiser to drop its spots on Limbaugh's show in the wake of his infamous comments about law student Sandra Fluke.

At the time, Friend released a statement condemning Limbaugh for calling Fluke a "slut" and a "prostitute" due to her advocacy of birth control.

"No one with daughters the age of Sandra Fluke, and I have two, could possibly abide the insult and abuse heaped upon this courageous and well-intentioned young lady," the statement read in part. "Mr. Limbaugh, with his highly personal attacks on Miss Fluke, overstepped any reasonable bounds of decency."

Speaking to shareholders on Wednesday, Friend said that the move away from advertising with Limbaugh was the "biggest factor" in the sluggish growth of his company in the second quarter of the financial year. He said that the company had moved to new radio shows, but would not benefit from their ad revenue for some time.

William A. Jacobson, a professor at Cornell Law School and a blogger for Legal Insurrection, transcribed Friendly's remarks from the audio of the call.

"It turned out to be a bigger issue than we had anticipated," he said. "...We really couldn't see what was going because there was so much noise around the website that we had no idea what the ultimate impact was going to be. It turned out to be a bigger hole in our revenue than we had thought when we initially did this."

But he stood firm by his choice, saying, "I'm not regretful of the decision, I think things would have been worse had we not done that."

Friend is not the only CEO to discuss Limbaugh's impact on his business. The head of Cumulus Radio, which airs the show on 38 stations, said the ad boycott had hit his company "pretty hard" and cost millions of dollars.