1999-2010

Saturday, April 22, 2006

Howard Stern will return to free radio

Prediction: Howard Stern will be back on terrestrial radio. And soon. He'll continue doing his pay-radio show, but simulcast the first three hours, with necessary bleeps, on free FM radio, and he'll make even more money doing so. Just wait. It was in the cards from the start.

Since he left the airwaves for pay-radio in January, radio hasn’t been the same and Stern has become instantly irrelevant. He'll pop up in a magazine to complain about lost listeners or in the papers to claim he’d fended off a deranged mugger, but as far as American culture and the everyday agenda is concerned, he’s dead. Gone.

But as his girlfriend's fame begins to eclipse his own hard-fought glory, Stern continues to do the same old radio show. Take a look at Stern’s website and see that with the exception of a smattering of f-words and heavier sexual and gross-out content, it’s basically the same show, without the listeners. Howard has become Rupert Pupkin, doing a show in his basement.

Meanwhile, his free-radio replacements have bombed, big time. Adam Carolla has the worst, most amateurish, self-indulgent, boring, dunderheaded morning radio show in Los Angeles (the way he talked over Dick Cavett with his motormouth, memorized observational bits Thursday morning was grounds for immediate dismissal), and finally lays bare the Kimmel-Carolla comic genius scam (the bosses should give talk radio hotshot Johnny Wendell a go. He has ideas for the morning). And in New York City, poor David Lee Roth was finally fired yesterday.

Roth’s spot in New York and several other major CBS stations will be filled by Opie and Anthony, who currently do a morning show on XM Satellite Radio— Stern’s rival. Starting as early as next week, they’ll reportedly do a 6-9 a.m. simulcast on XM and WFNY, then additional hours only for XM, where the lack of FCC content guidelines permits much more explicit language and graphic content.

That’s what Stern will be doing soon: simulcasting his Sirius show on free radio, then carrying on satellite the rest of the morning.

Stern once kvetched about radio restraints. Opie & Anthony were actually kicked off radio for a sex-in-St.Patrick’s-Cathedral stunt, and went to satellite long before Howard. They’ve experienced the frustration of being forgotten. Now they've set the stage for Stern's return.

By the way, the experts have said that Howard lost ten million listeners and no one can figure out where they went. After four months of surfing the AM and FM dials, through Stephanie Miller (good) and Mancow (very bad) and even Mark & Brian (weird—they spend hours in the morning simply playing Pop Quiz—like they’re killing time on a bus) while waiting for five minutes of Paul Harvey, this listener got an iPod.

(See Stern's gal Beth O here)

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

My boyfriend and I got Sirius so we could listen to Howard. That lasted about three weeks. Howard is so utterly and completely self-involved, he's become unlistenable. Every sentence out of his mouth is about how so-and-so mentioned him, how he's revolutionizing radio, how this station is trying to imitate him and that celebrity owes Howard his fame. He's a complete bore. So he can swear as much as he likes now? All that means is that he's a complete bore who can say the f-word. Whoop-dee-doo. And have you heard any of his "celebrity" guests? It's worse than Season 29 of Celebrity Fit Club as far as D-list celebs is concerned. I'll tell you where the 10 million listeners went: To better morning radio.

Anonymous said...

You are so correct. Howard Who hasn't done a good show in ten years. He's got so many excuses as to why that is and it seems the trouble is everything and everybody but him. I am so happy I live in New York and now have Opie and Anthony to listen to. They are funny and generous with others, their program is fun and has a sense of adventure. Anyone for retarded dwarfs and slow teens, I think NOT.

John S. said...

Free radio? Dead. The only thing that is good on free radio is Jonesy's Jukebox on 103.1 here in LA.
Howard's show is better than ever. Chances are if you don't like it now, then you never did and you never will.
Satellite is a new technology. As more and more people sign up everyday, and more car makers offer Sirius as standard equipment, the listeners will come back.
If you don't like it, that's cool. At least you can't complain to the FCC.