Kirkus Review
How talk radio evolved from informative discussions of local issues to a forum for outrage.Rosenwald (Senior Fellow/Robert A. Fox Leadership Program, Univ. of Pennsylvania), the co-editor-in-chief of "Made by History," the Washington Post's daily history section, makes his book debut with a brisk, well-researched history of the rise and transformation of talk radio. Because FM radio, with its stereo signal, carried more music, beginning in the 1960s, AM's share of the listener audience plummetedand with it, ad revenue. Station owners, in financial straits, saw in the news talk format a way to build popularity. Advice shows, interviews, and caller-driven discussions of topics relevant to local listeners appealed to Americans yearning for connection and community. In talk shows, listeners found "a virtual replacement for the front stoop, through which they could discuss current affairs with people like themselves." Although now identified with conservative political views, as recently as the 1980s, talk radio "was diverse in topics and political orientations." The debut of Rush Limbaugh, in 1988, changed the tenor of talk shows dramatically. Like his listeners, Limbaugh was dissatisfied with the liberal stance of mainstream media. "I validate what millions of Americans already think," he claimed. Outspoken and hard-hitting, Limbaugh, along with other hosts, "flaunted opposition to political correctness and sneered at the new norms promoted by the rights movements that inflamed conservative sensibilities." While the hosts did not limit their guests strictly to Republicans, DemocratsBill Clinton exceptedfound talk radio "an awkward fit." Able to simplify "even complicated, highly technical matters into something understandable and ominous," talk radio hosts influenced voters. In the 1994 election, Republican leaders credited Limbaugh with the party's victory. With the advent of Fox News, the "content, style, and verve of talk radio" moved to cable, creating a forum for "pugnacious," right-wing personalities who "pushed for unfiltered, ideologically extreme candidates and a party shaped in their image."A vigorous analysis of contemporary politics. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Choice Review
In this extensively researched and elegantly presented volume--which comprises many brief chapters treating significant moments in the history of talk radio--Rosenwald (scholar in residence at Partnership for Effective Public Administration and Leadership, Univ.of Pennsylvania, and frequent contributor to news media) pushes back against the prevailing conspiratory narrative: talk radio has become an increasingly visible arm of the Republican Party and platform, and it is used to push candidates and further a partisan agenda. Rosenwald argues that the birth and growth of conservative talk radio resulted from the FCC's 1987 elimination of the fairness doctrine, and it came about more or less by accident as a result of the strong personalities that came to dominate radio. At the time talk radio's aim was to make money; the political sway came much later, as talk radio became more doctrinaire and bound up with the Republican Party. Chronological chapters show key inflection points in the rise of talk radio, the movement of strong personalities to ideologue status, and the ways these came to influence and later dominate mainstream politics. Rosenwald suggests that talk radio was, and indeed continues to be, a democratizing force that encouraged political participation across the ideological spectrum. Summing Up: Recommended. Lower- and upper-division undergraduates; researchers and faculty; professionals. --Erin Pappas, University of Virginia