as a Philly listener of NYC talk since the '80s. I know I have posted before that I happened to have heard Limbaugh's very first broadcast on WABC in 1988 - mainly because I had tuned in to listen to Lynn Samuels and his show booted hers (and she was-then jokingly whining about being kicked out of her studio for his show). Later, Samuels went loon and became a tried and true "birther". 
I had been through the bouncing around of "GET OFF MY PHONE!!11!!!!!!" Bob Grant (from WABC to WOR to WABC again) and would also note for you to not forget the Sliwa family dynasty of Curtis and (ex-) wife Lisa (and I think he is still on the air).
Curtis Sliwa briefly had that "duet" with Ron Kuby as "Curtis and Kuby", during the era of having shows that featured a "liberal" and a "conservative" to kick off the banter and talk material. Similarly at night was " (John) Batchelor and (Paul) Alexander", which was actually an intelligent show - particularly during the early days of the Gulf War(s).
Where the "liberal/progressive" radio attempted to survive was on the black-owned stations that had some kind of talk format - as mentioned WLIB (which had actually run/syndicated Rev. Al Sharpton's "Keeping it Real" ) and talker/activist Bob Law (who was on WWRL during a graveyard shift, about the only time my mom and me could pick the station up in that crowded spectrum with what was a relatively lower-power station).
What RWers did with the stations once they gobbled them up, was to program a slate of loon talkers and then syndicate that across the country - i.e., people like Mike Gallagher, Hugh Hewitt, Michael ( "Savage" ) Weiner, Dennis Prager, Bill Bennett, Glenn Beck, Dennis Miller, Joe Piscopo, etc. Of course Hannity was nurtured on WABC and spun off into his own lala land like Beck and Weiner.
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