With all due respect to William F. Buckley and Barry Goldwater, the modern age of American conservatism began with the presidency of Ronald Wilson Reagan, a.k.a. Ronaldus Magnus. From 1980 through the end of the decade, Reaganism and conservatism were one and the same.
But the first age of conservative broadcast media didn’t begin until 1987, with the formal abolishment of the Fairness Doctrine (one of the government’s most absurdly oxymoronic titles). Finally freed of “equal time” inequality, conservative voices suddenly found a home on the airwaves, reaching — and influencing — millions of Americans.
And its flagship format was talk radio.
Weirdly, the biggest reason for talk radio becoming a conservative platform was institutional liberalism: Left-leaning voices ruled TV news (plus most of the biggest newspapers and all the major news organizations) with an iron fist; other than talk radio, there was nowhere else for conservatives to go.
With the left freezing conservative voices out of all the other media, talk radio was all we had: It was talk radio or bust.
Thus began the Age of Talk Radio.
And the biggest talk radio show of all was the Rush Limbaugh Show.
Sure, there were plenty of other talented, provocative voices: G. Gordon Liddy broadcast to “radio fee D.C.” offering “review and commentary of the news” (while drooling over the lingerie ads). Neal Boortz, a right-leaning libertarian, was a phenomenon in Atlanta. Bob Grant, Ollie North, Michael Reagan, Laura Schlessinger, Jim Bohannon, and others gained millions of loyal listeners.
But there was only one Rush Limbaugh.
Amidst the growing galaxy of conservative voices, there was Planet Limbaugh — and everyone else. El Rushbo set the agenda, and all the other hosts were ensnared in his gargantuan orbit, following his example and (shamelessly) copying his format. Until the day he died, Limbaugh was the preeminent conservative thought leader: If you were an up-and-coming Republican politician, Limbaugh’s seal of approval was worth its weight in gold.
Although Limbaugh’s star glowed brightly until the very end, talk radio’s dominance as the ultimate conservative platform began to wane around Sept. 11, 2001.
That’s when the second age of conservative media began: The Age of Fox News.
With terrorism, war, and 24/7 breaking news, a three-hour radio show struggled to compete with a 24-hour news station. For the very first time in television history, conservative viewers could listen to a conservative perspective all day long.
And just like before, Fox News was successful for the same reason talk radio was successful: It was the only place conservatives could go.
Liberals controlled all the other news stations. Their bias was so blatant, by the 1990s, CNN was dubbed the Clinton News Network — and from Dan Rather to Tom Brokaw to Peter Jennings, conservative voices weren’t just excluded from the network news; they were mocked and ridiculed.
As far back as 1992, one of George H. W. Bush’s go-to lines on the campaign trail was, “My favorite bumper sticker is, ‘Annoy the Media. Re-elect President Bush.’”
For most of the next 20 years, Fox News was far and away the most dominant conservative media platform. If you wanted to be a big-time player in the Republican Party, you needed the blessings of Fox and Friends, Bill O’Reilly, Sean Hannity, and (most importantly) Roger Ailes.
Donald Trump relied on Fox News to promote his longshot 2016 presidential bid more than any other medium.
Because that’s where conservative eyeballs were concentrated. Whereas liberal audiences were divided dozens of ways across dozens of competing platforms on dozens of competing stations, conservative audiences were monolithic: Fox News was our home.
And it was, until about 2020.
The one-two punch of the #MeToo Movement, which gutted Fox News of its top talent (both on-air and behind-the-scenes) and grassroots conservative outrage over the 2020 election cost FNC millions of viewers. The trust was broken.
The financial fallout was considerable, too: Fox News paid $787.5 million in a defamation suit brought by Dominion Voting Systems; a still-pending case with Smartmatic could cost them an additional $2.7 billion. The consequences of those lawsuits continue to reverberate.
Ask yourself: When was the last time the Fox News Channel aired a story about voter fraud?
It’s probably been about five years. (One FNC producer told me, point-blank, that they’re now prohibited by corporate from covering ANY story about voting irregularities.)
From 2020 through the end of 2025, conservative media was multipolar. Instead of one monolithic, all-powerful juggernaut, conservative eyeballs had splintered. Fox News was still a force, and talk radio still had its moments, but the rise of alternative conservative media — Newsmax and One America News on TV, plus scores of conservative voices on YouTube, Rumble, and social media — had cannibalized the old guard.
Many of the newest stars of alternative media had actually cut their teeth on Fox News. Huge names like Tucker Carlson, Megyn Kelly, Glenn Beck, and Bill O’Reilly migrated to digital platforms (and not always voluntarily).
They weren’t the only voices: Comedians-turned-podcasters, such as Theo Von, Andrew Schulz — and most of all, Joe Rogan — became kingmakers in their own right. Their media influence was one of the biggest stories of the 2024 election.
Before the Biden presidency, no conservative worth his salt would’ve turned down a primetime sit-down on Fox News to tape an episode of the Joe Rogan Experience. It would’ve been unthinkable.
Today, EVERY single big-name conservative would snub FNC in a nanosecond for a chance to go one-on-one with Joe Rogan!
Because Joe Rogan has a vastly bigger audience. And he’s not the only one who can make that claim.
[Tucker] Carlson routinely draws millions of views for a monologue on X. His Vladimir Putin interview in February pulled in more viewers in 24 hours than Fox & Friends reaches in a week. [Candace] Owens commands a younger, digital-first audience legacy media outlets struggle to reach, and she monetizes directly through merch, memberships and platform payouts. Fox, by contrast, remains tied to cable subscriptions and legacy ad structures — still massively profitable, but undeniably shrinking. The business model of right-wing media has bifurcated: influencers chase digital virality while Fox maintains institutional credibility. [emphasis added]
It’s not an unfair description: Fox News is a brand. For it to survive, it must be perceived as a credible, “fair and balanced” news organization (at least to a right-of-center audience).
Meanwhile, talk-radio hosts make a living by building an emotional bond with their audience. There’s an intimacy to radio — a unique sense of really, truly knowing the soul of the host — that’s markedly different than television.
Radio feels like a one-on-one relationship. TV feels like a performance.
Even today, years after he died, millions of conservatives still love Rush Limbaugh. The bond he built survived his death.
Nothing will ever break it.
We don’t feel the same way about Bill O’Reilly, Tucker Carlson, or any of the other TV hosts. There was something special about the format, the man — and especially his medium.
But podcasters and influencers just need clicks.
Virality for its own sake is the secret to their success. It ain’t about emotional bonds or long-term credibility; it’s all about the clicks, baby.
Which has led to the rise of the shock-jock political influencers and their all-too-predictable race to the bottom.
It was one of the most famous scenes in the 1997 Howard Stern biopic, Private Parts:
Ratings Expert: The average radio listener listens for 18 minutes. The average Howard Stern fan listens for — are you ready for this — an average of 1 hour and 20 minutes.
Kenny “Pig Vomit” Rushton: How can that be?
Ratings Expert: Answer most commonly given: I want to see what he’ll say next.
Kenny “Pig Vomit” Rushton: All right. Okay, fine, but what about the people who hate Stern?
Ratings Expert: Good point. The average Stern hater listens for an average of two-and-a-half hours a day.
Kenny “Pig Vomit” Rushton: Look, but if they hate him, why do they listen?
Ratings Expert: Most common answer: I want to see what he’ll say next.
It’s the exact same reason why audiences today watch Candace Owens’ dopey theories about Mrs. Macron’s original genitalia, or her asinine conspiracy theories about Charlie and Erika Kirk: They wanna see what she’ll say next.
2020 birthed the Age of Schizophrenic Conservative Media. We were hopelessly divided — splintered across radio, cable television, social media, alternative media, and more. For five long years, a chorus of right-leaning voices dueled for supremacy.
Sadly, it took the tragic death of Charlie Kirk to end the third age of conservative media and give rise to the fourth: The Age of Credible Conservatism Vs. Shock Jock Influencers.
Shock jocks can’t rest on their laurels. They’ve gotta continually create new and novel ways to offend and outrage. They’re trapped into a never-ending cycle of escalation.
Which is why their antics get stupider and stupider.
It’s not the Ronald Reagan way, the Rush Limbaugh way, or even the Fox News Channel way. Shock-jock influencers are an entirely different species — and they belong in an entirely different ecosystem — but because many of them had once been loyal conservatives, it’s taken audiences time to catch onto their con.
(Some, like the Heritage Foundation, are still struggling to tell the difference.)
Recommended: Airport Gyms, Afghan Crazies, and the Tyranny of Half-Baked Ideas
The dust is still settling; the aftershocks will linger for years. But make no mistake, we’re in a new era of conservative media.
Choose a side wisely.
One Last Thing: The Democrats are on the ropes, but make no mistake: The donkeys are still dangerous. We need your help to succeed!
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