Talk Radio's America: How an Industry Took Over a Political Party That Took Over the United States

by Brian Rosenwald

Overview

The cocreator of the Washington Post’s “Made by History” blog reveals how the rise of conservative talk radio gave us a Republican Party incapable of governing and paved the way for Donald Trump.

America’s long road to the Trump presidency began on August 1, 1988, when, desperate for content to save AM radio, top media executives stumbled on a new format that would turn the political world upside down. They little imagined that in the coming years their brainchild would polarize the country and make it nearly impossible to govern. Rush Limbaugh, an enormously talented former disc jockey—opinionated, brash, and unapologetically conservative—pioneered a pathbreaking infotainment program that captured the hearts of an audience no media executive knew existed. Limbaugh’s listeners yearned for a champion to punch back against those maligning their values. Within a decade, this format would grow from fifty-nine stations to over one thousand, keeping millions of Americans company as they commuted, worked, and shouted back at their radios. The concept pioneered by Limbaugh was quickly copied by cable news and digital media.

Radio hosts form a deep bond with their audience, which gives them enormous political power. Unlike elected representatives, however, they must entertain their audience or watch their ratings fall. Talk radio boosted the Republican agenda in the 1990s, but two decades later, escalation in the battle for the airwaves pushed hosts toward ever more conservative, outrageous, and hyperbolic content.

Donald Trump borrowed conservative radio hosts’ playbook and gave Republican base voters the kind of pugnacious candidate they had been demanding for decades. By 2016, a political force no one intended to create had completely transformed American politics.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780674185012
Publisher:	Harvard University Press
Publication date:	08/13/2019
Pages:	368
Sales rank:	1,078,718
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.30(h) x 1.40(d)

About the Author

Brian Rosenwald is Coeditor-in-Chief of “Made by History,” a daily Washington Post history section, and a historical consultant for the Slate podcast Whistlestop. He has written for the Washington Post, CNN.com, Politico, and The Week, among others, and has discussed contemporary politics on CNN, NPR, and the Sirius XM Radio channel POTUS: Politics of the United States. Rosenwald is Scholar in Residence at the Partnership for Effective Public Administration and Leadership (PEPAL) program at the University of Pennsylvania.

Table of Contents

Introduction 1

1 The Colossus Rises 11

2 With Talent on Loan from God 21

3 Media That Sounds Like Us 31

4 Necessity, Mother of Invention 39

5 The New Republican King 51

6 Bill Clinton, Talk Radio Innovator 57

7 Stopping Legislation in Its Tracks 61

8 The Political Earthquake 71

9 Everything Changes 79

10 The Democrats Wake Up 91

11 Talk Radio Takes Over Television - and Tries to Impeach a President 101

12 Money Propels Talk Radio to the Right 109

13 Talk Radio in the 2000s: Big Changes for the Medium and for Politics 113

14 The Parties Go Their Own Ways 121

15 Disgruntled but Still Loyal-Unless You're a Moderate 137

16 The Titans of Talk 1 - Bipartisanship 151

17 Never a Republican Puppet 161

18 The Conservative Media Empire 171

19 I Hope He Fails 177

20 The Relationship Sours 183

21 Hunting RINOs 193

22 Trying (and Failing) to Govern 201

23 Turning the Power Structure Upside Down 219

24 The President That Talk Radio Made 227

25 The Big Picture 255

Notes 271

Acknowledgments 345

Index 349

Editorial Reviews

In his 2016 presidential run, Donald Trump utilized styles of rhetoric similar to those of talk radio hosts in order to garner a strong base of loyal followers and rile up political activism amongst his supporters…This book could prove useful for those interested how media—both the form factor and the communicative aspects—affect political standing.

Communications Booknotes Quarterly - Tyler M. Wilson

At long last, Brian Rosenwald has filled a scholarly vacuum by offering a cogent, well-researched, and entertaining explanation of how Donald Trump was elected president. The conventional wisdom that Trump won by swinging 80,000 voters in Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, and Michigan might be factually accurate, but is too simplistic. Instead, Rosenwald proves that the outcome of the 2016 election was three decades in the making, made possible by the emergence of a candidate perfectly suited to capitalize on an environment created by the titans of talk radio. This is the book that provides proper context for the greatest election upset in modern American history.

Michael Smerconish

The rise of conservative talk radio has changed American politics and American life, and Brian Rosenwald tells a careful and comprehensive story of its rise and its mushrooming influence. From Rush Limbaugh’s humble beginnings to the election of Donald Trump, Talk Radio’s America shows through careful research and subtle argument how talk radio moved well beyond entertainment and grievance to change the role and makeup of mainstream media, the kinds of stories Americans consume, and the pliable nature of truth. A superb guide to one of the most potent forces in modern political history.

John Dickerson

Upending conventional wisdom, Brian Rosenwald’s deeply researched book offers an incisive account of how conservative talk radio transformed American politics, altering the relationships between Congressional leaders and rank-and-file members, between activists and the party establishment, and between the demands of entertainment and the process of policymaking.

Bruce J. Schulman

[Rosenwald] argues that the profit motive radicalized talk radio and with it the Republican Party…Because conflict and scaremongering drove ratings and ratings drove profits, the more extreme the hosts became, the more listeners they gained, and the more money they made. As they amassed power and influence, the hosts could demand fealty from the politicians they were discussing every day.

The Nation - Eric Alterman

Documents Limbaugh’s formative role in turning an old technology into an instrument of power that transformed the Republican Party and political discourse in the United States…An important book…Goes a long way to documenting how an old medium helped create a new politics in the United States and paved the way for Donald Trump’s presidency.

IEEE Technology and Society Magazine - Vincent Mosco

Demonstrate[s] that broadcasters like…Rush Limbaugh were just as important to building the Republican Party as deified political figures like George Wallace, William Buckley, or Pat Buchanan. Indeed, far from being a mere tool of the Republican Party, talk radio is revealed…as the dominant explanation for that party’s continued existence, an essential precondition of the far right’s cultural dominance today.

New Republic

An informative account of talk radio and its impact on politics and policymaking.

Pittsburgh Post-Gazette - Glenn C. Altshuler

Rejecting claims that the medium acted as a Republican puppet, [Rosenwald] describes a curious relationship between the Grand Old Party and talk radio hosts, one that has had seriously deleterious consequences for American political life.

Financial Times

Moving the discussion of contemporary conservative media out of the realm of shadowy conspiracy theory and into the sunlight of deeply researched historical investigation, Brian Rosenwald shows how right-wing talk radio moved from the margins to the mainstream and warped American politics in the process. This book will be of vital interest to anyone concerned about restoring the quality of American democratic debate.

Joseph Crespino

Rosenwald takes a look at the rise of conservative radio from a variety of perspectives and offers a clear study of how policies, market forces, personalities, and timing played a role in creating a movement…The book is interesting from beginning to end.

European Legacy - John M. Bublic

Important and groundbreaking…Expertly shows how disparate strands in the American political landscape converged in the late 1980s to help make talk radio the potent political force it would become…A must-read for anybody hoping to understand how Trump captured the Republican presidential nomination.

Washington Examiner

Before there were social media echo chambers, before there was Fox News, there was Rush Limbaugh and his kin. Brian Rosenwald has told the definitive story of how a squad of outrageous, rule-breaking right-wing radio hosts set the Republican Party agenda and then overtook the party itself. Scholarly and yet eminently readable, this book is indispensable for understanding the world conservative media wrought.

David Greenberg

Rejecting claims that the medium acted as a Republican puppet, [Rosenwald] describes a curious relationship between the Grand Old Party and talk radio hosts, one that has had seriously deleterious consequences for American political life.

Financial Times

2019-06-09
How talk radio evolved from informative discussions of local issues to a forum for outrage.

Rosenwald (Senior Fellow/Robert A. Fox Leadership Program, Univ. of Pennsylvania), the co-editor-in-chief of "Made by History," the Washington Post's daily history section, makes his book debut with a brisk, well-researched history of the rise and transformation of talk radio. Because FM radio, with its stereo signal, carried more music, beginning in the 1960s, AM's share of the listener audience plummeted—and with it, ad revenue. Station owners, in financial straits, saw in the news talk format a way to build popularity. Advice shows, interviews, and caller-driven discussions of topics relevant to local listeners appealed to Americans yearning for connection and community. In talk shows, listeners found "a virtual replacement for the front stoop, through which they could discuss current affairs with people like themselves." Although now identified with conservative political views, as recently as the 1980s, talk radio "was diverse in topics and political orientations." The debut of Rush Limbaugh, in 1988, changed the tenor of talk shows dramatically. Like his listeners, Limbaugh was dissatisfied with the liberal stance of mainstream media. "I validate what millions of Americans already think," he claimed. Outspoken and hard-hitting, Limbaugh, along with other hosts, "flaunted opposition to political correctness and sneered at the new norms promoted by the rights movements that inflamed conservative sensibilities." While the hosts did not limit their guests strictly to Republicans, Democrats—Bill Clinton excepted—found talk radio "an awkward fit." Able to simplify "even complicated, highly technical matters into something understandable and ominous," talk radio hosts influenced voters. In the 1994 election, Republican leaders credited Limbaugh with the party's victory. With the advent of Fox News, the "content, style, and verve of talk radio" moved to cable, creating a forum for "pugnacious," right-wing personalities who "pushed for unfiltered, ideologically extreme candidates and a party shaped in their image."

A vigorous analysis of contemporary politics.

Kirkus Reviews