Do people still purchase AM radios?
When I was 11 years old, they were all the rage. They could be portable, sitting in your shirt pocket while a wire connected one plug to your ear. They were known as transistor radios then, and just about all people listened to was music.
It wasn’t great quality sound, although it was fascinating when I was in high school to listen late at night to stations up to about a thousand miles away. Once FM radio became popular with its better quality sound, most music migrated there and the best thing on AM was baseball games.
Eventually, sports broadcasts were the only thing worth listening to on AM radio. I’m pretty sure that the last year I listened to AM radio in my car started with a “1.”
When I was in my 20s, the biggest enjoyment I got from AM radio was when I was out late at night and I listened to Larry King. Mostly it was for the way he treated lunatics and drunks.
“Sleep it off, sir.”
I know my lifelong friend Bill Madden had a goal of being the next Larry King. He didn’t make it, but he has had a long and enjoyable career in radio.
It’s possible to credit King for keeping AM radio alive through the ’70s and ’80s, along with “shock jocks” like Howard Stern. There were other lesser successes like Michael Jackson (a white British guy, not Jacko) and various women talking about relationships.
But in 1988, a guy who had failed at a lot of things came to New York from Sacramento and started a show that became the biggest thing since Father Charles Coughlin in the 1930s.
Within a couple of years, he became a cultural phenomenon. His show was on 300 stations and within two more years he was on 600 stations. When Newt Gingrich and his Contract on America led Republicans in capturing the House of Representatives in 1994, for the first time in 40 years, they credited Limbaugh.
If anyone is still alive who remembers Father Coughlin, they’re probably on the far side of 90 now. He had bigger audiences and more of an effect than Limbaugh, but he might be the only one. Radio meant a lot more then. What Limbaugh — and the lesser hosts that followed in his footsteps — did starting in 1988 was to make AM radio relevant again.
In the end, that might be the only nice thing to be said about the man. Starting with the 1992 election, Limbaugh began the transition from conservative and sometimes entertaining to rabid Republican and vicious.
As soon as Bill Clinton won the election, Limbaugh began ever show with “America Held Hostage, Day –.”
He used to say that 75 percent of his audience agreed with him and the other 25 percent tuned in for the entertainment value. I can attest to the possibility of truth there. I was one of the 25 percent until 1993, but eventually the racism and the sexism just got to be too much.
Worst in the end was his alliance with Donald Trump, which climaxed with Trump giving him the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2020 and Rush returning the favor by saying Trump had really won the election against Joe Biden.
Now he’s gone and AM radio will probably resume its slide into oblivion.
There won’t be anyone who will take his place. Many of the other right-wing hosts are crazy, and runner-up Sean Hannity is too mean. Some have suggested that the perfect successor to Limbaugh would be Trump, but it’s difficult to see much of a future for a show hosted by a morbidly obese 74-year-old.
Someday folks will see AM radio as a companion to buggy whips, iceboxes and Conestoga wagons.
Relics of the past.