Nah - they could put a chimp in the seat that follows Howard and it would get killer ratings. They certainly don't pay Bubba, so it can't have been a value decision; they must feel that Bubba should have been doing better than he was given his lead-in. The number of people canceling because of this will be negligible.
As Bubba fades back into obscurity, I wonder wow long it will take for him to start attacking Howard again? "Stern could have made them pay me! Cheap Jew bastard!"
I'm not a Bubba fan but he has fans. He's made fans! If it was year one, maybe people wouldn't mind. Now they'll be mass cancellations. More than likely they will be just a lot of secondary subscriptions of Stern fans with more than one radio and they'll cancel maybe all or at least one of the excess. If I were a Bubba and Howard fan and had two radios open, I'd close one. They are truly making all the wrong programming choices. Thought with Bubba gone, it sounds like they might free up that bandwidth (although Stern fans would still want Stern 24-7 so all those "others" would go bye, bye or somewhere else.