Your attributions go far beyond what I wrote. The essential point is that because Fox News and Rush Limbaugh and conservative talk radio were new, they took time to gain affiliates, find and grow their national audiences by getting conservatives to tune them in, and then capture ad revenues commensurate with the size of their audiences. That is how the media business works.
No they don’t.
“”Just as Limbaugh, talk radio, and Fox News prompted some initial disdain from the old Bill Buckley/Firing Line/National Review crowd, so also have other conservative personalities and venues attracted disparagement at first.””
No they didn’t, conservatives were giddy with joy from the first moment of these two different conservative breakthroughs, they weren’t waiting for Bill Buckley to approve them, 8 years apart.
“”When Limbaugh began his national program, his manner was often criticized as jarring and brash, and his venue — talk radio — was new and decidedly declasse for the National Review readership and Buckley fans.””
No it wasn’t, we loved him and were happy that conservatism had a national voice.
“”Longtime conservatives (including myself) were accustomed to Firing Line, with its dignified discussions, Buckley’s mid-Atlantic accent, and a Bach intro; and we regarded NR’s high editorial standards, Buckley’s love of obscure words and rambling sentences, and the approving references and discussions of classical music in NR as part of the conservative idiom.””
No we weren’t, and God knows that we in general were not as prissy as you describe, you must hang around some real weak sister types. Your world sounds like the place rinos breed.
“”The potency of Limbaugh and talk radio was not apparent at the start.””
It swept the nation, it was an instant phenomena among conservatives.
“”You miss my point. My friends, as Jewish lawyers, are of a demographic that is not normally conservative Republican. Yet they find Beck a more appealing personality than Limbaugh, and they find Beck’s teaching efforts helpful in raising their teen daughters to be conservatives. To me, that was an example of why Beack has the audience that he does.””
Your problem seems to be that you want to force reality to reflect your personal little world, you seem to have been a Johnny come lately to Rush, and later to Fox news, and want to insist that all conservatives were and that it was because they had good taste and were too refined for talk radio and a conservative cable news station, until Buckley told them it was OK to rub shoulders with the masses.
Then you you want to push the huckster Beck and pretend that he hasn’t already been around for more than a decade.
It might have to do with Beck not being truly conservative, and more liberal on social issues.