With all due respect for Mr. Limbaugh, it was inevitable that a talk-radio format would excel, (if it wasn't him, it would have been somebody else) in some ways he is just a tragic comedian, pointing out the absurdities of modern "liberal" policies. Point is, there is no shortage of material, so how hard is that? The liberals got around this in past years by only presenting one point of view and/or ridiculing and marginalizing opposing viewpoints since they had a vitual stranglehold on news outlets. Astonishingly, it was possible to convince the mainstream that their views were somehow, not mainstream, which is quite a trick. The death knell for the old-school news folks was claiming they were objective, which really stuck in the craw of folks since the 60's at least.
The same can be said for the fall of the USSR.
It's a question of WHEN. If RR hadn't shown up, it might have been another 50 years before the Wall came down. If Rush hadn't persevered, it might not have happened until 2030. Don't sell Rush short.
With all due respect you do not know what you are talking about.
I was listening to Rush when he was a local talk show host in Sacramento. He was doing the one thing that local radio management did not want done, talk nationally. He refused to discuss local matters.
At the time Rush went National, the only national talk shows were late at night. None were during the day.
When Rush went national, no one believed in him, not even the stations he managed to sign up. The original deal was he had to do a local three hour show (in New York) before they allowed him to do his national three hours show, so in the beginning he was doing six hours a day.
On top of that, he wasn't getting paid. If I remember the situation, that was why he had the weekly RUSH TO EXCELLENT TOURS, this is where he earned the money to pay his bills.
Rush openned up a whole new world of talk radio, and sure it looks inevitable today, but not when he started.
"With all due respect for Mr. Limbaugh, it was inevitable that a talk-radio format would excel, (if it wasn't him, it would have been somebody else) "
That somebody else was Larry King, the " King " of talk radio.
He had about 15 years along with countless other talk show hosts, to make something of talk radio.
Even into the second year of Rush's show, when Rush was starting to measure his audience in the millions vs King's tiny numbers, King still claimed he had never heard of Rush.
Eventually King's show became too much of an embarrassment and he dropped it.
At the end I was telling friends to tune into King, the Rush conservative callers were destroying him on the air.
Larry King failed, along with Mario Cuomo, Jerry Brown,and other Democrat leaders, comedian Al Franken is failing.
The startling, phenomenal success of the Rush Limbaugh show was not inevitable.