Bob Grant, Barry Farber, Joe Pyne, and others, in the 60s, 70s, and early 80s. I know Grant, who was NYC-based, gained a following far outside his station's normal broadcast range due to late-night shows. At night the atmosphere bounces AM signals in a different way than during the day, and form what I've heard Grant could sometimes be picked up as far as eastern Ohio.

By the early 80s, thought, AM radio was in decline as more and more things moved to FM frequencies. Stations needed to fill time, talk radio was relatively cheap, and call-in formats allowed a level of interactivity that was relatively unique at the time. Them during that time, deregulation lifted some of the restrictions on media ownership, making it easier to have the same shows play live in different markets.

Combine that with elimination of the Fairness Doctrine, and it created conditions ripe for someone like Rush to flourish. Combine that with his rallying the conservative faithful after Bush lost the 92 election, treating Clinton's plurality win as if it were merely technical and wasn't really legit.

Combine those with other conservative media that had been built, like The Washington Times in 1982, and Roger Ailes bringing his Nixon-era idea of GOP-TV to life as FOX News in 1996, plus hundreds of conservative religious stations, and that propaganda becomes the background radiation which affects everything.

https://twitter.com/albamonica/status/1188623950743588866

https://twitter.com/BBCSteveR/status/1188470728393404417


https://twitter.com/BBCSteveR/status/1188472009195433984



Worth repeating from last week...

I suppose we can expect the rest of the Republicans to start chanting "LOCK THEM UP! LOCK THEM UP!" in... lemme check my watch... 5, 4, 3, 2, never.