Damaged by music moving to FM, AM stations had begun experimenting with talk formats in the 1980s. Even so, on August 1, 1988 when Limbaugh debuted nationally, talk stations were still few and far between, limited largely to major markets. Most executives thought daytime talk needed to be local and outside of the few markets with multiple talk stations, the conversation was staid and gentlemanly, with an emphasis on callers and interviews. Most hosts leaned left, but their opinions were often undetectable. As the late Barry Farber, a conservative New York star in this era, told me in an interview, most hosts would've "fl[own] down to the Amazon and get our head shrunk before it would occur to attack the president."
Limbaugh upended this formula. He combined the sermonizing of an earlier generation of conservative broadcasters with the antics and fun of a disc jockey (he had been one), and the interactive talk format of conversational shows like Farber's. The product was zany, unpredictable, and unlike anything that listeners had ever heard. Limbaugh took far fewer callers, and his opinions were front and center.
But he didn't preach. Instead he used parodies, nicknames, themed updates, and tongue-in-cheek humor to espouse the conservative values he had learned around the dinner table growing up. Star Wars' imperial march (Darth Vader's theme) introduced "gorbasms," which discussed how liberals and the media naively swooned over Soviet Leader Mikhail Gorbachev, viewing him as the one who could save the world from Ronald Reagan's itchy trigger finger and nuclear holocaust.
A 1991 bit, "Gulf War Won," cast a fake miniseries on the Gulf War. While casting decisions humorously reflected appearances — Betty White as Barbara Bush, Ringo Star as Yasser Arafat, James Earl Jones as Colin Powell — they also reflected Limbaugh's conservatism. Suave, masculine action heroes and attractive starlets portrayed conservatives and their wives — picture Clint Eastwood as President Bush and Sylvester Stallone as Limbaugh himself — while liberals were mocked, emasculated or portrayed by villains, exemplified by Jack Nicholson as the Joker and Whoopi Goldberg respectively portraying CNN's Peter Arnett and Bernard Shaw, and Jabba the Hutt getting the role of National Organization of Women President Molly Yard.