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He is often given credit for single-handedly saving the AM band and starting the talk radio renaissance that began in the late 1980s and flourished during the 1990s.

Rush Limbaugh began his radio career while still in high school in his hometown of Cape Girardeau, Missouri like so many of his generation - spinning records. After college and a number of DJ jobs he left the business to work in the Kansas City Royals business office.

In 1983, he got back into radio doing political commentary for KMBZ, Kansas City. In 1984, he moved to Sacramento to begin his career as an issues talk host on that city’s heritage AM, KFBK. He spent four years honing his craft as a conservative, issues-oriented talk host and in 1988 began his syndicated, midday program that he continues to do today.

It was Limbaugh’s multi-faceted ability to take hold of an issue and make it his own, to be entertaining while discussing it and to compel listeners to tune in to his program again and again for his opinions that attracted former ABC Radio president Ed McLaughlin to Limbaugh when he was looking for a talent with which to launch a nationally syndicated program.

Indeed, it is those qualities that allowed Limbaugh, to paraphrase his own words, to say on the radio what many people were already thinking but were afraid to in a way that changed how issues-oriented talk radio would be approached for a long time to come. Limbaugh’s program also broke important new ground in that he rose to superstardom outside of drive time and in syndication at a time when the industry mantra was that good radio had to be local.

His unsurpassed success in these pioneering areas has made him the most listened-to talk host in America for most of the past 10 years. Syndicated by Premiere Radio Networks, Rush Limbaugh is the greatest radio talk show host of all time.