Do not think that Rush won't see your entries. He slums here on FR. He really does.
1992. Graveyard shift. 12A to 3A local delayed. Flitting through dial. Spatula City. Hooked.
1989. My ‘87 Alliance got bent, other driver’s fault. Loaner was a 70’s PO$ with an AM radio. Grumblingly tried it, and heard somebody talking sense! There I was, rolling down the street shouting “Yess!” every minute or so.
Ping
my aunt told me about his radio show- i was pretty apolitical at the time .
We were driving thru Pennsylvania and his show was the only thing we could pick up in a “dead” zone.
So after about 5 minutes I said “ Oh, this is the guy Auntie was talking about!” This must have been 20-25 years ago, too.
My husband makes a point of listening to him almost every day.
It was back in the 1990s. A guy with massive crush on me (a wide pool, so his anonymity is assured) asked me if I ever watched Rush Limbaugh.
What’s a “Rush Limbaugh”? I didn’t even know that was the name of a person.
Then, I watched the TV show and liked what I saw. We were in San Diego back then, so it was on pretty late, but worth it.
Then I moved to a more remote area in which TV reception was non existent. I could not get motivated for the cable thing (what?! You have to PAY to watch television? Madness).
So, I did the only sensible thing—got one of those old giant antennas that you could rotate. My actual boyfriend installed it. To this day, I can still hear him muttering: “All for that guy”.
Somewhere around when you first discovered him - he had a TV show at the time....I still have a Rush Limbaugh tie.....
April 1990.
Driving home from work, I always listened to the local news and then Paul Harvey’s “The Rest of the Story,” which aired at 5:05 pm M-F.
This day, I turned on my radio and, instead of Harvey, heard The Pretenders. It was an oldies station playing Mel Torme, Tone Bennett, et al from the 50s - 60s, so the The Pretenders confused me.
Then, this guy came on and began talking. He seemed rather agitated and I assumed he was in the studio at my local station. I kept listening and finally figured out he was not local but this was actually a national show.
This was when his show was two hours and we got it here on tape delay, 4:00 - 6:00 Central time.
I was in on the selection of the Rush show to be added to the Armed Forces Radio network. Bit of a long story to post from a phone. If anyone cares, ping me and I’ll do it from home after work.
1988 a co worker suggested that I check out this new guy on the radio.
I was instantly hooked.
After that I introduced my parents and they listened every day for the rest of their lives.
Thank you Rush.
I was in my work van. I pulled over to eat my McDonald’s take out.
There wasn’t squat on the radio so I started surfing. I stumbled across “this guy on the radio” doing an “update” with the theme song “tiptoe through the tulips” by Tiny Tim.
He asked his assistant Kiki de la Garza, to get Tiny Tim on the phone to see if he was offended by Rush using his song.
I thought, “good luck with that”. I stuck around to see if she actually was able to get him on. SHE DID! He loved the fact that Rush would use his song.
I was treated to a “Spatula City” commercial. I thought it was weird, but thought it was a real commercial.
I thought “this is something “different”. I tuned in from then on for many years.
Working in a contract gig in North Florida in the summer of ‘89. Spent a day off hanging out on a beach in St. Augustine with a transistor radio. Tuned across him on the dial and stopped in my tracks. “Whoa, what is this?”
Fine collection and early audio of the RL Program at:
https://www.rushlimbaugh.com/daily/2018/08/01/a-trip-back-to-pittsburgh-and-sacramento/
Day 1-when he went local in NYC on WABC 10-12 am.
I was an outside sales rep in South Florida in 1988. Music radio was boring, so I started listening to News/Talk radio on WIOD. They had a host named Neil Rodgers who was hilarious, but very liberal. He started complaining about a syndicated show on at the same time as his. Neil called him “Push Bingbong”.
One day Neil went on a sports talk binge, which bored me, so I tried Push Bingbong, aka Rush Limbaugh. It was like the clouds parted, a choir of angels sang, and a beam of heavenly light descended upon my car...I had found someone who thought like me!
His inspirational, self-sufficient, you can do it monologues helped me be a better salesman. I eventually became Vice President of the company. I give much of the credit to Rush Limbaugh.
First started listening to Rush in the early 1990’s after I got out of the Navy on KVI 570 AM in Seattle! I was working graveyard shift most of the 1990’s so it was bedtime for me at the time his show came on (9 am - NOON PST).
Still listen to him whenever I can at work in the Seattle area via my iPhone TuneIn radio app and Bluetooth headphone (so as not to trigger my snowflake libtarded coworkers)! Rush changed stations in Seattle in the early 2000’s from KVI 570’AM to KTTH 770 AM where he’s still at in Seattle.
I first heard Rush on San Diego’s KOGO, before he was picked up by KFI in Los Angeles. A friend on a political campaign knew of him from Sacramento and said to check him out.
That was probably 1988. LA morning talk radio was dominated by a British accented liberal on KABC named Michael Jackson, a darling of Hollywood and the national Democratic party. Jackson was a very big deal.
KFI picked up Limbaugh and ran him directly opposite Jackson. In 1997 Jackson’s 30 career came to a halt, finished off because Rush was now dominating the morning audience.
Before Rush SoCal conservatives weren’t entirely without a radio presence. Small private station KIEV featured George Putnam at noon- George was an LA newsman and friend of Ronald Reagan. In some ways Rush has never matched George Putnam. George was a driving force on passing California’s Prop 13. And more importantly George was a leader in the illegal immigration movement, more than a decade before Rush would even admit that there is any problem at all.
Both California and LA radio have changed a lot since then. The English speaking audience has been driven out of a lot of LA- Spanish language stations vie with American ones for market share. KFI dumped Rush, the guy who made KFI a talk powerhouse. Putnam died, as did Terry Anderson- KIEV was sold to the Trump despising GOPe Salem Radio group. And California continues its descent into becoming post-America.