Now wait a minute! Reagan’s FCC indeed did away with the fairness doctrine in the eighties. However, it wasn’t until the Clinton era (ten years later) that the station ownership rules changed. I’m not sure if it was the FCC or Congress that did the deed.
In any event, it wasn’t Clear Channel that put Rush on KFI. The station was still owned by Cox Broadcasting out of Atlanta with General Manager Howard Neal and Program Manager David G Hall. Rush was being promoted as a host by the former director of ABC’s defunct talk network and was on perhaps a dozen stations led by WABC New York when an internecine dispute erupted at KFI.
Geoff Edwards at that time was the late morning host following Bill Handel; Tom Leykis was on in evening drive. A fatwah, supported by an artist named Cat Stevens, was issued by Iran’s Ayatollah against a European poet named Salman Rushdie.
Here is an account of what occurred next, taken from
http://radioinsight.com/community/topic/rip-geoff-edwards/
Edwards “ didn’t agree with Tom Leykis’s plan to publicly burn all the Cat Stevens records he could get hold of. Geoff refused to promote the event and was suspended. Stevens had become a Muslim and supported the Ayatollah’s fatwa against Satanic Verses author Salman Rushdie. Leykis ultimately destroyed the records with a steamroller because burning them would have caused air pollution. Edwards quit KFI and was replaced with Rush Limbaugh. And Rushdie is alive and well in 2014, thank you.”
This left KFI with a hole in its lineup and it was Cox’s Neal and Hall (not Clear Channel) that initially put Rush onto the station. He was an instant hit and KABC’s Michael Jackson never recovered.
Cox later that year (1998) sold KFI and its two sister stations (KOST and KACE) to Chancellor Media as part of a 16 station swap. Chancellor then merged with Capstar in 1999 and rebranded itself AMFM Inc. That same year (1999) CC snapped up Jacor Communications, which owned 230 stations and also Premiere Radio Networks. Premiere owned both Rush’s program and that of Dr. Laura, which at the time originated from KFI’s old studios at 8th& Ardmore. Dr Dean Eudell was also in their stable of hosts. Premiere used the EIB network label for those stations carrying Limbaugh - it may well have originated as claimed by another poster with Limbaugh himself in a prior job. Premiere was originally founded by former KFI disc jockey (1977-78) Tim Kelly.
The point is that CC didn’t acquire AMFM Inc and gain control of KFI until 2000. By that time Rush, Dr. Laura and Dr Eudell had been on the station for two years. (Source: Wikipedia -
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jacor http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/KFI_AM_640 ).