This is a terrific post on liberal talk radio and the reasons for Rush's success.
The main competition for liberal talk radio isn't conservative talk radio-- it is all the other liberal media outlets from NPR to ABC to CNN. Liberals have many sources of news and commentary that confirms their worldview. Conservatives had almost nothing before Rush.
Limbaugh took off like a rocket because he was a talented radio guy who went after a large, under-served market. For many conservatives there was something electric about hearing an unapologetic right-winger review the news of the day. That gave him a special type of first mover advantage and strong claim on listener loyalty.
Chesterton captured those listeners's feelings in The Man Who Was Thursday:
Through all this ordeal his root horror had been isolation, and there are no words to express the abyss between isolation and having one ally. It may be conceded to the mathematicians that four is twice two. But two is not twice one; two is two thousand times one.
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