I discovered Rush Limbaugh in September of 1993, when I was still in elementary school. Before then, they used to have cartoons on in the morning before the network news. There was The Jetsons for a while, and maybe before that was Underdog, and in 92-93 there was a God-awful one called Camp Candy. I used to get up early to watch the cartoons before school. Well, in '93, they pulled the cartoons off and replaced them with Rush Limbaugh's TV show. I thought, "that's a silly sounding name." But even though his commentary at the time went way over my head, something about him kept my attention—enough that when they moved his show back from 6:30 to 5:30 the next year to make way for local news, I would still wake up early to try and catch it.
I truly believe that Limbaugh's death is probably going to mark the end of talk radio as we know it. The current crop of pundits have either gone podcast or can't hold a candle to Limbaugh. Sean Hannity and Glenn Beck are not going to keep stations afloat.