Why does Limbaugh not bother changing the format of his show? With a very few exceptions,Limbaugh format has remained the same for almost 25 years and provides little in the of news content or impartial analysis.
And after 25 years he's still on the air, has a lot of listeners and (perhaps most importantly) is profitable. The show isn't about news content or impartial analysis. The whole point is to appeal to conservatives.
Who, if you'll remember, had very little foothold in traditional media when his radio show debuted. Ergo, talk radio and Conservatism are like peanut butter & jelly; when Rush tried to do TV, it bombed, and when liberals tried to do talk radio, it bombed even harder.
NPR seems to be doing well. Apart from the economic issues, Morning Edition has almost as many listeners.
NPR is in theory unbiased and impartial. Openly progressive or liberal networks, such as Air America haven't done well at all. Morning Edition and All Things Considered are also drive time programs, while Limbaugh usually airs mid-morning to mid-afternoon (depending on time zone) and still pulls more listeners.
If it ain't broke, don't fix it.
The conservative news media family tree/MasterApprenticeChain works something like this: National Review->Rush Limbaugh->Fox News. All three have been around and successful for years. Why change?
06:03:05 PM Oct 25th 2011
I feel there needs to be some mention of his, perhaps woefully uninformed but still ridiculous and offensive nevertheless, defense of the Lord's Resistance Army, the militia in Uganda responsible for abducting children for soldiers and sex slaves among other horrific crimes. Not sure how it could properly be brought up on this page, but it's certainly significant. It was on the YMMV page a while back, but that whole page was deleted for some reason. Why was it deleted?
I guess some admin was a hardcore Limbaugh fan, and got upset when the mileage of the Your Mileage May Vary page varied from his.