Talk Radio’s America: How an Industry Took Over a Political Party That Took Over the United States by Brian Rosenwald (review)

At the State of the Union address in 2020, President Donald Trump honored conservative radio personality Rush Limbaugh with one of the nation’s highest awards for civilians, the Presidential Medal of Freedom. Limbaugh’s public commendation depended on a particular kind of Republican and president, one who had directly benefited from the social, commercial, and political developments detailed in Brian Rosenwald’s Talk Radio’s America.

Rosenwald’s story begins in the 1970s as AM radio lost “from 75 percent . . . to 25 percent” of market share to FM radio (15). Commercial concerns, argues Rosenwald, determined talk radio’s rightward turn, “dictat[ing] the medium’s content, tone, and accordingly, political impact” (4). The rise of right-wing radio also depended on a significant shift in federal communications law to survive and thrive. “In 1987, the FCC repealed the fairness doctrine,” writes Rosenwald, “which for thirty-eight years had required that broadcast television and radio stations provide balanced coverage of controversial issues” (16). Limbaugh entered the AM radio market in 1988, an auspicious time to advance his provocative brand of political commentary. But Limbaugh, according to Rosenwald, “didn’t just invigorate talk radio; he reimagined it” (24). In doing so, Limbaugh became more than merely another voice for movement conservatism. His radio show was an affirmative experience for any conservative left fretful or aggrieved after the Reagan years, helping (in particular) white men to feel great again.

Thankfully, Rosenwald does not cast the road to Trump as inevitable. An “almost uniformly conservative political talk on the AM dial” did not appear overnight; rather, it grew “gradually” in the 1990s with fits and starts along the way (38). Talk radio hosts—Limbaugh included—routinely misread the political and cultural landscape, for instance pushing for the removal of Bill Clinton from office in 1998, a move that polled poorly with voters and revealed AM radio’s echo chamber limits. Nevertheless, in the brief span of a decade, talk radio had redefined the means by which conservative politicians connected to constituents. Fox News, which first aired on cable television in 1996, soon had Republican upstarts beating down its doors for the free publicity and direct line it offered to an expanding national audience. Even as liberal voices and personalities remained on the network in its early years, Fox News policed the boundaries of “conservatism” for viewers, usually opting for sensationalist messages that framed any and every imaginable social or political issue via the lens of right-wing partisanship.

Commercial pursuits aligned more systematically with party identity after 9/11. In the 2000s, Fox News and the GOP created and maintained a nearly symbiotic relationship, with party leaders like Mitch McConnell and John Boehner making regular appearances on talk radio and Fox News for political effect. Limbaugh’s show and other media outlets, however, reserved the right to disagree with party leadership or call out perceived “Republicans in Name Only.” Case in point, in 2007, right-wing radio and television media ginned up popular opposition to George W. Bush’s immigration bill. By noting such instances of divergence between a Republican president and conservative media, Rosenwald revises the usual impression that the Tea Partyism of today’s GOP was solely a kneejerk reaction to Barack Obama’s election.

The last third of Talk Radio’s America may be of less interest to readers who like their history to have a measure of distance between the past and the present. It deals with Obama’s precandidate years, the regular attacks on his presidential legitimacy, and Trump’s ascension from reality television star to—in Rosenwald’s estimation—“the President that talk radio made” (227). During Obama’s first term, conservative “media formed one network” as various on-screen, on-air, and online outlets “were intricately intertwined...