IEEE Technology and Society Magazine - March 2022 - 23

Book Review
Talk Radio's America: How an Industry
Took Over a Political Party That
Took Over the United States-Brian
Rosenwald (Cambridge, MA, USA:
Harvard Univ. Press, 2019, 358 pp.)
Reviewed by Vincent Mosco
Queen's University, Kingston,
ON K7L 3N6 Canada
 In March 2020, as the coronavirus was rapidly
spreading throughout the United States, President
Trump strode into the Situation Room for a meeting
with his COVID-19 task force. According to sources in
attendance, the President excitedly announced that
he wanted to start a 2-hour, daily White House talk
radio show to provide a regular opportunity for him
to update Americans, quell fears, and answer listener
questions. Ultimately, the President quashed the idea,
giving as his reason that it would compete with Rush
Limbaugh, whose legendary talk radio program was
the gold standard among conservative supporters.
When aids suggested the White House program might
air at a time that did not conflict with Limbaugh's
broadcast, the President demurred, choosing not to
ruffle the feathers of right-wing radio's Big Bird. The
talk radio maestro was held in such high regard that,
just a month or so earlier, the President used the
solemn occasion of his State of the Union address
to announce that he was giving Mr. Limbaugh the
nation's highest civilian award, the Presidential Medal
of Freedom. This decision would not surprise Brian
Rosenwald whose book documents Limbaugh's
Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/MTS.2022.3147540
Date of current version: 9 March 2022.
March 2022
formative role in turning an old technology into an
instrument of power that transformed the Republican
Party and political discourse in the United States.
The story begins in August 1988 when Limbaugh,
at the time nothing more than a failed disc jockey
turned sales executive for the Kansas City Royals
baseball team, tried out a new format on a floundering
amplitude modulation (AM) radio station. Rather
than preach to the audience, as predecessors had
done (including outright bigots like Morton Downey
Jr., whose behavior cost him his job), Limbaugh's talent
was, in Rosenwald's words, that " he could reach
through the radio and grab people, making them
feel like he was their partner in an intimate conversation. "
Specifically, that meant channeling the anger
of conservative listeners against what Limbaugh saw
as mounting liberalism in America and the failure of
the Republican Party to do much to reverse course.
The talk-radio host proved to be a success as both a
propagandist and a ratings builder. As a result, station
owners, especially those holding AM radio licenses,
saw opportunities to boost revenue and political influence.
With the expansion of television and frequency
modulation (FM) radio, whose clearer signal made it
the choice for popular music programming, AM had
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IEEE Technology and Society Magazine - March 2022

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