USA Journalist Larry King dies at 87
Rush Limbaugh, the father of conservative US radio, has died in his 70s of lung cancer, possibly caused by heavy smoking, leaving a huge void in the US media at a time when technological change and the controversy over the impartiality of informants is at the center of public debate in that country and in the West.
Such was his influence that
Donald Trump
, in his first statements after leaving the White House for Fox, has defined him as "a legend."
Limbaugh was much more than a journalist.
It was a cultural phenomenon.
He is responsible for the popularization of the word
feminazi
.
And, also, it was an economic phenomenon.
Ultimately, he is responsible for the explosion of the Fox News network, with an air of radio talk show, which has emerged as the
leader of news television in the United States
during practically the entire presidency of Donald Trump.
His audience was, however, always a mystery.
The communicator's claims of 20 or even 40 million people connecting to his
show
seem clearly exaggerated.
Tlakers
magazine
, specialized in the world of radio, gave a much lower figure recently: just 15 million.
But the numbers only tell a small part of the story.
Limbaugh's audience loyalty was absolute
.
And his contract, of Messi’s dimensions, proves it: since 2009, Sirius, Sirius XM radio paid him 100 million dollars - 83 million euros - annually.
He has only been surpassed by the king of
radio-porn
,
Howard Stern
, whose style and manner are at the opposite end of Limbaugh's, with the exception, obviously, of the capacity for provocation.
Because what Limbaugh - or, as his 'fans' knew him familiarly, Rush, by his first name - was best known for his controversies.
He was able to broadcast on the air a song titled
Barack the Magic Black
, in reference to the then president, Barack Obama.
He was able to say that Canadian actor
Michael J. Fox was "exaggerating" the tremors caused by Parkinson's
, while he mimicked on the air - and broadcast via video on the internet - the spasms of the Hollywood star and accused her, without evidence, to "not take your medication".
He was able, during his short and failed Fox News television adventure in the 1990s, to say that
"the White House has a new bitch"
while the picture featured a photograph of Bill Clinton's daughter Chelsea, who was thirteen years old. .
And he was able, in 2016, to always make the same pun between "witch" ("witch") and "bitch (" bitch ") to refer to the Democratic candidate for the White House,
Hillary Clinton.
Only Rush could say, as he did on February 25, that Covid-19 was just "like a bad cold."
Or suggest, on December 10, that the states won by Donald Trump secede and separate from the United States, something that is illegal according to the doctrine of the country's Supreme Court.
With that attitude, it is not surprising that another man from the world of entertainment and lover of perpetual provocation, Donald Trump, gave Limbaugh the highest decoration of the US in peacetime:
the Presidential Medal of Freedom.
Nor is it surprising that he did so in the most striking way possible: in the middle of the State of the Union Address, held exactly one year and ten days ago.
Limbaugh, who attended as the president's personal guest, received the award in Congress from the first lady, Melania Trump.
His contract was typical of Messi, he earned 83 million euros per year
It was the institutional consolidation of a communicator whose combination of comments, catchy nicknames and
ad hominem
attacks
was a constant factory of controversies in the United States that created a school within the country, first, and then exported to the whole world.
But Limbaugh not only established his empire on the airwaves because of his communication skills.
Like all achievers, he came at the right time with the right idea and the right partner.
His rise to fame came in 1988
, when Californian radio entrepreneur Ed McLaughlin offered the commentator's program free to US stations that wanted to accept it.
There was only one condition: that those stations accept four minutes of advertising for every hour of program that McLaughlin's production company, ABC, would sell to advertisers across the country.
For radios, it was a bargain.
Free content, just in exchange for giving those four minutes.
What no one expected was the incredible
audience
boom
that followed.
In that, Limbaugh was also supported by technology.
By the late 1980s, radio audiences in the United States had shifted from AM to FM in droves, because of its far superior sound quality.
AM referrals needed some kind of content that didn't require great audio, and that's where the provocative commentator came in perfectly.
Already said
Marshall McLuhan
, that ideological matter was also in a different galaxy Limbaugh:
"The medium is the message"
.
On this occasion, the AM.
The talent of the communicator did the rest.
The result:
three decades of dominance of political radio
.
Limbaugh withstood it all.
Presidents.
Political changes.
Iron ill health, which, like an FM Beethoven, includes the entire hearing capacity twenty years ago, and also an arrest and fine for addiction and illegal use of painkillers and anxiolytics.
His death leaves a void in America's conservatism.
It is a void that could already be seen coming.
Limbaugh's audience is aging rapidly, and Covid-19 has caused daily car trips to the office to decline as telecommuting takes over.
The transfer of
The Rush Limbaugh Show
to the Internet was successful, but less than in its traditional AM medium.
But that does not mean that his journalism model is in crisis.
People like
Joe Rogan
, 53, are taking their lead in the podcast world.
Limbaugh is dead;
your radio model, no.
According to the criteria of The Trust Project
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