You can whine and complain and speculate all you want in an effort to diminish Rush's success, but you won't change a single fact:
Arbitron is the standard for radio ratings across the nation and it has put Rush at #1 in ALL major and medium sized markets in more than 600 stations across the nation.
Rush commands and gets the prime midday window for radio listening in every single one of those markets. They don't meet Rush's requirements, they don't get his program.
They are delighted to accommodate his requirements because almost every single station, no matter what its format or genre, who carries the Rush Limbaugh Program moves into the #1 slot in their market no matter where they started. It happened here in Albuquerque. It happened in Amarillo. It has happened time and again across the country.
Rush paved the way to put talk radio on the format and make it the most popular genre of radio. And because he plowed that field, it has provided opportunity for many hundreds, maybe thousands, of others to enter that genre as talk show hosts and facilitators. And even with all those others, some of them brilliant, entering the field, it has diluted his ratings a bit because there are only so many listeners to go around, but he has never lost his #1 rating.
And he has maintained that rating for more than 25 years which is nothing short of amazing.
Hate him if you want to. Join the chorus of haters who can't stand that he is successful and desperately want him to be unsuccessful. Who are willing to join all the dishonest stupid stuff that is said about him and believe those who claim he is failing or never was successful in the first place. Who want to diminish him, minimalize him, negate him.
But the facts speak for themselves. Love him or hate him, appreciate him or not, enjoy his style or don't, appreciate his content or not, you cannot take a track record like that away from him.