Ask Your Physician if Rage is Right for You

It’s been a long day and I have neither time nor energy to tell you tonight of the good old days when Rush was fun to listen to.

But I can relate that I tuned in today en route to campus and El Rushbo was angry from the word “go.” I couldn’t stay focused on the content of his broadcast, although I did manage to learn that “environmental wackos” are the true culprits in the California wildfires, and that “act of God” is the California liberals’ only form of acknowledgment that God exists.

Instead I found myself pondering his tone, which was one of continuous, sputtering, indignant rage. I wondered how anyone could endure listening to such a tone for three solid hours.

I tried a thought experiment. We’ve all had the experience of being treated badly, telling a friend about it, and hearing them get angry on our behalf. “That stinks! Of all the nerve! How dare that bastard say such a thing to you! What a complete asshole! I’d like to give them a piece of my mind!”

I know it can feel good when someone becomes indignant for my sake. It’s a straightforward, unadorned validation that I actually matter.

But suppose my friend was still erupting with righteous fury an hour later? Would it still feel good?

I mean, past a certain point, isn’t it painful to be in the presence of an angry tone of voice, even if it isn’t directed at you—even, indeed, if it’s an angry tone enlisted on your behalf?

I couldn’t imagine being comfortable around a devoted friend who maintained such a tone, much less choosing to tune in specifically to hear it.

And yet millions of people not only *can* imagine it, they regularly make it part of their day.

The Birth of Modern Talk Radio

I spoke before about the crisis on the AM dial: the way in which its audience, interested mainly in popular music, forsook AM radio for the better quality reception offered by FM. AM stations urgently needed a new format that would grab listeners. It found one in the form of talk radio.

Talk radio was nothing new. There was “The Larry King Show,” for example, which hit the airwaves in 1978 and rapidly acquired a wide following, including my father, who was often still wide awake after the TV stations had signed off for the evening. “The Larry King Show” suited him perfectly because it aired from midnight to 5:30 a.m. He’d listen to it in the dark until he finally dozed off.

King’s epitomized what was then the most common talk show format, which he did better than anyone else. During the first hour of the program he’d interview a guest—frequently the author of some recent arresting book—and do so in an affable style based upon genuine curiosity. Convinced that King was really interested in getting to know them, guests were often utterly disarmed and therefore more candid than they might otherwise have been. This knack was a key to King’s success—a knack he eventually carried to television once cable news entered the scene.

After the first hour, King continued the interview for two more hours but invited callers to participate, which they did in droves. At 3 a.m. he excused the guest and engaged directly with callers for the rest of the show, usually signing off with a brief, middle-of-the-road political commentary.

My father liked King because he made good company. He also said that he usually learned something from the show, and he appreciated that.

“The Larry King Show” (which ultimately reached 500 markets) offered one model of an effective talk show format. But the one that ultimately proved most relevant to conservative talk radio was an offshoot of the durable “Morning Zoo” format which dominated the air waves as listeners got ready for their day and hit the road for the weekday commute. The Morning Zoo was (and remains) a hybrid between talk and music. DJs would spin the occasional platter but they spent a lot of air time cracking wise with each other, pulling various stunts—the surprise prank call to some bewildered soul was a source of cheap, reliable fun—and in general affecting a zany atmosphere with an irreverent style of humor.

This gave rise to the “shock jock,” who jettisoned the music and pushed the Morning Zoo format as hard as it would go. Unlike King, shock jocks thrived on controversy and tested the limits of what they could get away with short of costing a radio station its license. The master of this format was Howard Stern, who honed his craft locally starting in 1975—moving several times to stronger markets—and took “The Howard Stern Show” nationwide in 1986. In tandem with sidekick Robin Quivers, Stern eventually reached an audience of 20 million listeners—and incidentally cost his station licensees $2.5 million in fines from the Federal Communications Commission.

Then there was Don Imus, another shock jock whose “Imus in the Morning” premiered in 1968 and acquired a nationwide audience during its 36 years on the radio (plus another 11 on cable TV). While abjuring Stern’s lusty embrace of being a thorough-going asshole, Imus had a crusty style and was an inveterate contrarian. He eventually shifted to an emphasis on news and politics—but not before the appearance of the main savior of AM radio: the redoubtable Rush Limbaugh, El Rushbo, founder of the EIB (Excellence in Broadcasting) Network for Advanced Conservative Studies, with half his brain tied behind his back just to make it fair.

Rush will dominate the next several installments of this effort to comprehend conservative media, but don’t lose track of his progenitors: King, Stern, and Imus. They knew how to entertain listeners day after day, for hours on end. Limbaugh took their genius and transferred it to politics.

Tune In for Crisis on Your AM Dial

If you bought a car in the 1950’s, 60’s, or 70’s, this is what your radio would look like.

It’s the point of departure for understanding the rise of conservative talk radio, and I’m realizing with horror that if I were to give a lecture on the subject to my undergraduates, I’d have to spend five minutes explaining how this thing worked.

But the key thing is that you’re looking at an AM radio, and AM radio basically sucks, at least if you want to listen to music. The Beatles, Beach Boys, Led Zeppelin, Elton John—90 percent of the time we got our first introduction to their music via the monaural speaker of an AM car radio. It was cool but only because we didn’t know any better: you’d put up with the static and the mediocre sound quality and save the quality listening experience for your record player at home.

If you were at home you could also listen on FM, whose sound quality was a lot better, had very little static, and could broadcast in stereo. But for reasons I don’t really understand FM didn’t work well in automobiles. In most makes and models they weren’t a standard accessory even if you could get one.

But eventually—the early 1980s or thereabouts—FM radio became common in automobiles. Given a choice between listening to music in AM or FM there was no contest. It was FM, hands down. No static at all, as the Steely Dan song put it.

That left a lot of AM radio stations high and dry. They had to figure out a way to stay alive. Some of them didn’t. Others limped along, often in an Easy Listening format. It was sad. But AM could still do one thing as competently as FM: it could broadcast a human voice. And that’s how talk radio became a staple on the AM dial. Not conservative talk radio—that’s not yet part of the story. But without the eclipse of AM by FM in American automobiles the story doesn’t begin.