How do they eliminate the offensive language off the old show reruns? Are they going through the old shows and altering the audio every time there’s an offensive term used?
And that’s leaving aside that much of what was offensive about Stern was about the sentiments and attitudes, more than offensive language.
Worth noting in that context, that the radio (& TV) business is rare in that an increase in gross revenue pretty much translates into that same increase in net profit. It’s not like you’re doing something to incease your beer sales - where you need to actually manufacture a lot more beer, which costs money. In this case, you’re producing exactly the same amount of the exact same product, and more people consuming it costs you virtually nothing.
As a result, the value of someone who can bring in more listeners is significantly increased.
Are there a lot of funny morning shows on the radio anymore? I haven’t turned on a radio in years.
Detroit had Drew and Mike in the Morning for years. Weren’t shock jocks, but were standard hilarious(to some) guys who joked about and talked about everything.
Never listened to talk radio. But read the third book of interviews by Stern. He has been a guest host on some celebrity judged talent show, which he said he went on to be better liked. And he disavowed (or claimed to) his earlier egotistical self. So he seemed to be trying to be less shocking. It’s not like he could compete with a President.
Drew and Mike still exists, one of them died (Mike) but they now have a daily podcast that’s basically their radio show in a podcast format. It’s very Morning Zooish from what little I’ve heard. I only know of them because they do have celebrity guests which is how I stumbled upon them but if you want a radio show as a daily podcast it’s everything you want.
From what I understand (I don’t listen to Howard anymore but I do hear ex-employees complain on podcasts about it) Howard basically edits out any “major” slurs (N word, F word, R word, T word) rather sloppily out of re-airs or just refuses to play those bits. The re-runs aren’t full show re-runs but just “Best of Compilations”. Recently after Betty White died supposedly Howard re-aired a legendary interview she had with their gag interviewer Stuttering John but they cut ALL of Stuttering John’s questions to her because they were all offensive, so now it was literally just isolated Betty White reactions.
Yeah Morning Zoo is generally a radio/podcast format where you get a bunch of people on mic at the same time and talk about current events while trying to make them funny. Lots of wacky sound effects or in-jokes are liberally sprinkled in. It evolved from morning drive radio where the idea was to get something fast paced and light but informative for people driving to work in the morning.
I think John Boy & Billy are still around in the South. Hawk and Tom are in the Greenville, SC market. (I mention them because Tom is an SD member, if only for one post.)
That doesn’t seem to be the right question. The right question would be “how many people would stop subscribing to SiriusXM if Stern wasn’t there?”
After all, there are probably people for whom listening to Stern is the main, but not sole, draw. Maybe they listen to howard 80% of the time and then use the other SiriusXM stuff 20% of the time. Then they could honestly answer that they aren’t there solely for him, but they might drop their subscription if he was gone.
Edit: On further reading, I see that was discussed. There were no replies to the post I replied to, so I jumped the gun on making that point. Still, I wouldn’t be surprised if people who cancelled or downgraded their Sirius subscription if Howard weren’t there is enough to pay for his salary. With 30m subscribers and the Stern package costing more than the normal package, you’d only need a few percent to justify it.