Conservative radio host and podcaster Dan Bongino will fill Rush Limbaugh’s coveted daily airtime on a chunk of stations across the U.S., said Cumulus Media Inc. ’s Westwood One.
Since Mr. Limbaugh’s death last month, the radio industry and conservative media have scrambled to fill the void left in the brash and unapologetic titan’s three-hour Monday-through-Friday time slot. His show was the most listened to in the U.S., according to Nielsen Audio, reaching more than 20 million monthly listeners on more than 650 affiliates as of the end of 2020.
Mr. Bongino will fill the three-hour show’s slot in markets including New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Dallas, San Francisco, and Washington, D.C. Most other stations will continue to air old tapes of Mr. Limbaugh, which has been the practice since he died.
The choice of Mr. Bongino, a former Secret Service agent and New York Police Department officer whose podcast, launched by Westwood One Podcast Network in 2019, has consistently topped the charts, indicates how listening habits are changing and how entrenched Mr. Limbaugh’s programming was in American conservative media.
Mr. Bongino lost three Congressional races—two in Maryland and one in Florida—running as a Republican, but his success in punditry has exploded. A vocal supporter of conservative candidates who once declared, “my entire life right now is about owning the libs,” his views often echo Mr. Limbaugh’s. He is also a man of many media: He has written several bestselling books, appeared regularly on Fox News, and commands a Facebook page with more than four million highly engaged followers.
