Rush Limbaugh Built Conservative Talk Radio's Mall; Others Followed

Some trace the media revolution back to June 1, 1980. At exactly 6:00 p.m. Eastern time, CNN started its around-the-clock broadcast. While that network offered news twenty-four hours a day and seven days a week for every single day of the year, it was not different in quality or perspective from the older networks. It simply carried more volume. CNN quickly became part of the legacy news system. That is what it aimed to be, and that is what it turned into.

Others mark August 4, 1987, as the true turning point. On this date, the Federal Communications Commission voted four to zero to repeal the Fairness Doctrine. FCC Chairman Dennis R. Patrick led the move. Still other historians point to August 1, 1988. This was when Rush Limbaugh started his show on ABC Radio Networks and reached out to fifty affiliates. I tell most audiences interested in how conservative talk radio began that Rush built the mall. Mike Gallagher, Larry Elder, Mark Levin, and others just opened stores inside that same building.

Rush gave AM station owners proof of concept. He sent a clear demand signal through all of media that half the country was not merely under-served but actually unwelcomed. The market answered quickly. Brian Kilmeade, Guy Benson, and many others on the Fox Radio Network are part of an ever-expanding news universe on the center-right.

Rupert Murdoch, founder of Fox News, said something similar in 2006. He noted that the good bulk of the press in this country was monolithic, leaning liberal to varying degrees. This comment echoed what he had stated at the actual launch ten years prior: Frankly, all the others look alike. We will be an alternative.

The success of the network and the brand has been phenomenal. What Rush Limbaugh did for radio, Rupert Murdoch did for cable news. Both proved there was an enormous, unmet demand in America for center-right and conservative news. As with Limbaugh, so it was with Murdoch: great success followed by others entering the field with the same basic model.

A quick look at cable news ratings shows that Murdoch was right, perhaps even more right than anyone suspected. Fox News does not merely dominate the ratings; it crushes them. Through three decades of rising to and remaining on top, the formula has stayed the same. Put professionals on the air who reflect what patriotic and America-loving portions of the public believe. Ask them to present the news in a fair, measured way starting at prime time.

Always be reasonable. Always stay open to other views. Use light humor and sly derision by all means, but even opinion hosts work to stay within the 20s while daytime programming stays firmly within the 40s. Counterfactuals are never productive, so spare yourself the time you would waste imagining a world where Fox News had not launched or thrived. It would be far less interesting and much more gray than legacy news left to its own devices over the past thirty years.

Having carved out a formidable fortress for its brand, it is unlikely that Fox News will be displaced from the top of cable news specifically, and increasingly "the news" generally, for years to come. What we see now are the first, tentative steps of legacy media trying to shrug off the reputation for bias it built since the Vietnam War turned legacy media into a vast swamp of advocacy journalism. That is a huge mountain to climb, especially as so many previous attempts have failed.

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Like universities bringing in a visiting professor with glowing credentials just for a year or two under the label "Visiting Scholar," the underlying institution is seeking camouflage rather than a genuine commitment to ideas it has long locked out.

Thirty years down the road, America will look again and find that journalism stays a craft, not a profession. The finest craftsmen know the world around them fully; they are not blinkered to half or more of the news horizon.