My take...I've said before that I believe Rush's strength was that he was a conversationalist first. That's what made listening to him and his callers so entertaining.
The problem with Mark Levin and Dan Bongino is that they are subject-matter experts first. Their style is to lecture; while informative, it is not necessarily entertaining.
Mark Steyn is a conversationalist, too. What differentiates Steyn from Limbaugh is that his personal interests are different. Rush liked football, golf, cigars, and rolled with the great thinkers of conservatism. Steyn is steeped in popular culture, movies, music, theater. Their conversations with callers are different, but both are witty and entertaining.
Levin is the farthest thing from a conversationalist on the radio, with Sean Hannity right alongside. Levin is grating, yells at callers, and runs hot and cold. But Levin is an expert on the Constitution, the Supreme Court, and the law. Hannity is repetitive, falls back on rote boilerplate clichés whenever a trigger word is mentioned, and interrupts guests with meaningless inside jokes at the worst possible moments in an interview. However, Hannity's Rolodex is large and he has access to top-tier people in government.
Bongino brings new keen insights as a former Secret Service agent, but I'm afraid that he will become a one-note song (full disclosure: I never listened to his radio show, but I have heard him as a guest on various shows). As a substitute host for Levin, Bongino would often take an entire show to detail the "big picture" on the plot against President Trump over the past four years. While it was a needed voice at the time, I'm afraid that it isn't sustainable radio entertainment unless we're in crisis mode.
Ken Matthews and Todd Herman are listenable and engage well with the callers, but they don't have the gravitas (in my opinion). That isn't to say that they won't in the future, but they were Rush's guest fill-in hosts and were purposefully deferential to him and his show. They will need to break out of that shell and define themselves without being in Rush's shadow if they want to be the next vanguard of advancing conservative thought.
All that said, Premier Networks needs to step up and make a final decision sooner than later, or events will overtake them and individual stations will peel off and make their own decisions on how to fill the noon to 3 time slot.
-PJ
“I’ve said before that I believe Rush’s strength was that he was a conversationalist first. That’s what made listening to him and his callers so entertaining.”
That’s exactly right. Rush himself understood that, I don’t know why so many in the industry manage to completely miss it.
Your observations regarding our other Talking Heads are right on the mark. You didn’t hear Bongino’s radio show, I did, or rather I tried several times before giving. He’s not Hannity Level annoying but hes’s close, despite being a bit smarter.