Modern talk radio as a major force in America started in 1926, when a Roman Catholic priest, Father Charles E. Coughlin, took to the airwaves. By the mid-1930s, as many as a full third of the entire nation -- an estimated 45 million people -- listened to his weekly broadcasts.
His sudden shift to the radical right disgusted his listeners and led his superiors in the Catholic Church to demand that he retire from radio and return to his parish duties, where he died in relative obscurity. Many say that the Fairness Doctrine came about in part because of Coughlin.
The right wing's summer of hate (Sidney Blumenthal)