IEEE Technology and Society Magazine - March 2022 - 24

Book Review
been floundering for years. Limbaugh provided the
template for reviving the old medium. Station owners
were quick to join his syndicated network and to
hire personalities who combined Limbaugh's smooth
delivery, ability to empathize with his audience, biting
humor, and relentless attack on all things liberal-
real or imagined.
In an engaging style, Talk Radio's America documents
the mainly successful parade of programing
that built on the master's success. What makes it
an important book, however, is Rosenwald's recognition
that this transformation in American media
was about much more than finding the right talent.
In fact, the foundation for the format's triumph
was established years earlier in the media deregulation
policy of first the Carter Administration and
then, more completely, under the presidency of
Ronald Reagan. These governments rolled back
rules requiring stations to broadcast a range of
viewpoints as a condition for license renewal.
Once they knew that regulators would no longer
hold them responsible to air different perspectives,
station owners were free to turn their outlets into
organs of uniformly conservative thinking. Not all
owners followed this script, but since most were
business people who lined up with the Republican
Party, the vast majority were relieved to be free
from what they saw as big government telling them
what to do with their property. They were even
more grateful when rules were rolled back that
set limits on the number of stations and the mix
of media properties (newspapers as well as radio
and television stations) one owner was allowed
to hold. This enabled owners to bring together
hundreds of stations across the country under
one umbrella, thereby lowering the costs of production
and amplifying their mainly conservative
message. When requirements to broadcast news
and to reflect the needs of the local community
were also eliminated, stations became vehicles for
pretty much whatever their corporate owners and
their advertisers-increasingly large, national businesses-chose
to promote.
Rosenwald is also careful to demonstrate that the
impact on politics was complex. Although the primary
beneficiaries were those promoting conservative
messages, Democrats caught on to the renewed
power of radio in the 1990s and began making use
of it effectively too. He cites especially President Bill
Clinton who used radio (and, of course, television)
24
to, as he liked to put it, " feel your pain. " Democrats,
according to Rosenwald, did not lack for opportunities
to turn the media to their advantage. However,
they were not as likely as conservatives to unite
behind one or a handful of simple messages that
could mobilize an audience intellectually and, more
importantly, emotionally. Moreover, led by Limbaugh,
talk radio hosts often saved their most strident
attacks " to hunt RINOs, " a common acronym
for Republicans In Name Only. With support from
and for the Tea Party movement of grass roots radical
conservatives and with the backing of big money
conservatives like the Koch brothers, talk radio activists
were determined to move the Republican Party to
the right by making it practically impossible for moderate
party members to run successful campaigns.
Once the RINOs were hunted into near extinction,
the Grand Old Party (GOP) would become the party
of its most conservative members. Rosenwald concludes
that the movement which united conservative
media and politics was largely successful. However,
he is not so sure that it succeeded in undermining
American democracy and, if it has, whether the success
it has achieved will be long lasting.
Talk radIo's aMerIca makes for compelling
story telling, but there are gaps in the story that need
to be addressed. Although it is largely accurate,
media historians will wince at some of the inaccuracies.
For example, early in his book, Rosenwald
makes the inaccurate assertion that FM radio was
" introduced in 1961, " presenting a fresh challenge to
an AM radio system barely surviving the onslaught of
television. In fact, FM radio had been around since
the 1930s and by 1940 was already demonstrating its
superior quality in a network of five model stations.
Despite attempts by AM radio station owners, led by
the legendary David Sarnoff of RCA, to eliminate the
challenger, FM persisted. By 1961, AM owners had
already given up the battle to destroy the competition
and, instead, had begun to buy up FM stations
to expand their programming and to duplicate their
own AM fare with a better signal. Moreover, in his
effort to make it appear that the rise of right-wing talk
radio had much more to do with profit than politics,
Rosenwald minimizes the political motivations of
radio station ownership, along with other media executives,
and corporate America as a whole, including
the powerful U.S. Chamber of Commerce. Profit mattered
but winning the " culture war " counted for as
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