Just so the Stern haters know: Howard donates a lot of money to charitable organizations and never bothers to mention it on the air.
Not exactly a maker for “Egotistical Asshole” if you ask me.
Also, saying people don’t subscribe for Howard Stern is like saying guys to go to Hooters for the great food and NOT the waitresses. :rolleyes:
I disagree. Most people I know are not egotistical, cruel, infantile, greedy, shallow, and self-centered. Yes, all people are human - that is rather obvious. That doesn’t change the fact that Howard Stern possesses the traits that I mentioned.
Um, no. It proves nothing of the sort.
Howard is a conundrum. He often expresses views that are progressive, but then he will turn around and do things that show his intolerance. As I said before, I suspect a lot of it is just an act. But that doesn’t change the fact that he does these things. Here are some things he has done on his show:
-When he had a guest on the show with Tourette’s syndrome, Howard began shouting “Nigger! Nigger!”, pretending to be the guest. Robyn pointed out that it was Howard doing it and not the guest.
-Howard’s sound-effects man often plays recordings of “Turkey in the Straw” or “Dixie” when a black person is talking or black people are being discussed on the show
-Howard frequently does unflattering imitations of what he thinks black men sound like (which incidentally sounds more like the way people talked about 100 years ago.)
-He has frequently had women come in to the show, strip for his staff, and “rates” them, often telling them their breasts are too small and that they should get breast implants. They have even had women participate in contests to win free breast enlargement surgery.
-I have heard him have prostitutes on the show and “quiz” them for the purpose of ridiculing them for being stupid.
I don’t have a problem with him doing any of that stuff. He has the right to say what he wants, and it’s entertaining to people. He isn’t the first comedian to make racist jokes, and I’m sure he won’t be the last. But for you to say he’s not racist or sexist makes me wonder if you’ve ever even heard the show.
All you’ve done so far is demonstrate your own ignorance.
Why must satellite radio succeed?
Doesn’t Jay Leno do that, albeit with tourists and other pedestrians?
I listened to Stern a while back when Montreal’s CHOM-FM picked him up. He could be very funny, or he could be boringly juvenile. He was, in any event, a lot more entertaining than CHOM’s current morning crew.
His salary is to bring in his fan-base, which he does. You’re never going to make a profit based on a single performer (at least not in any way that has any sort of life-span), but what can happen is that the fans of the one guy will convince their friends to join. For every time a person sits in a car with someone with Sirius radio playing–and no commercials–that’s a potential sale. The longer they can maintain a set fan base of a large size (like one or two million), the better a chance they have of getting the rest of the content to be self-supporting.
Once the content can finance itself, the price of the service can be made back just through pricetag on the player itself (probably.)
No insult intended or implied. It’s just clear that you aren’t apprised of Sirius’ serious financial woes. Your rosy imaginings are way out of sync with the hard numbers industry analysts are poring over. I’d suggest reading the WSJ or head over to Bloomberg for a rationale analysis.
This should get you started, but is no substitute to analysis:
“Karmazin’s company has about $358 million in cash on hand but $1.08 billion in debt, and as the interviewer pointed out to him, Sirius’ bonds have been downgraded to junk status.”
Here is a simplified balance sheet. Look at the numbers.
I’d say the same of you.
Yes, he does. The only difference is that Jay goes out and finds random people, while the people on the Stern show typically come to him and know exactly what they’re getting into.
And when Howard and his staff rate women’s bodies, it’s because those women contact the show and ask to be evaluated because they want to be in Playboy. If they think she is ready to be in Playboy they connect her with the right people, and if not they tell her what she needs to do to get ready.
As far as I’m aware, Jay doesn’t single out one group; he seems to pretty much pick random people on the street. Believe me, if Jay were in the habit of, say, only showing black people who couldn’t answer his questions, I’d have something to say about it. That’s why his bit works - it’s pretty much random people on the street of all types. “There’s a fine line between clever and…stupid.”
I also haven’t seen any Tonight Show episodes where women appeared nude in order to win the chance to have breast-enlargement surgery. Maybe I missed that show.
Look, I’m not objecting to Howard’s show at all; like I said, he has every right to do what he wants. But to say that he doesn’t treat women as sex objects on his show is rather naive. I just don’t see how one can seriously make a case for the statement “Howard Stern isn’t sexist”.
Exactly. Maybe not the greatest entertainer ever, but certainly the best morning show on the radio.
You can say that, but I’ve provided backing for my point, whereas all you have done is make unsubstantiated claims.
Is this supposed to be proving that Howard doesn’t treat women as sex objects on his show? Because it would seem to prove that he does. I don’t understand what you think it proves to say that women come to him. If a woman appears voluntarily on his show, do you think that proves he isn’t sexist? Could you explain the logic there, because I don’t get it. Because I just said he was sexist; I never contended that he forces people to be on his show who don’t want to be.
Basically, you’re going to have your opinion, based on popular opinions and maybe listening here and there over the years (or more likely seeing his tv show), and I’m going to have my opinion based on following the show for the last decade, and they’re never going to agree with each other. Jay Leno’s bit is a watered down version of Howard’s, lifted from him and tweaked to fit nicely into middle America’s living rooms. It’s absolutely no surprise that you think his bit is ok and Howard’s isn’t; that’s what you’re supposed to think.
Sorry to dredge up an older thread, but we’re about to find out the answer to this question.
Whether you like Howie or not, I didn’t think either of the two were doing nearly well enough to give out such bonuses to the talent. If he was a CEO maybe…
I still get annoyed that they call him a shock jock. He is NOT A DISK JOCKEY! He doesn’t run a music program, and whatever music there might be is such an inconsequential part of the whole that it doesn’t matter.
They have commercials on Sirius? Tell me again, what was supposed to be the motivation for paying a monthly fee to listen to your radio?
I used to listen to Stern’s radio show when it was on in the Twin Cities and found it to be of variable quality. As has been mentioned. The strippers and the “rating” of women’s bodies made up only a small portion of the show, but that was the portion that ended up on E. I always thought that was the worst part of the show and that it was much better when they spent time commenting on the news or current events. I also thought he had an ability to pull off some unusually revealing celebrity interviews, avoiding the usual scripted bullshit about the subject’s latest movie or “what was it like to work with Meryl Streep?” type questions and getting them to sound like real people.
At times I thought he could be quite funny, at other times I found him racist, sexist, homophobic, egotistical and cruel to the point where I’d have to turn it off. His treatment of women on the show was especially unpalatable to me, and I don’t care if they did volunteer for it, I don’t think that makes it any more entertaining to see them degraded.
Is he worth the money? I guess if he pulls in subscribers, he’s worth it to Sirius. I wouldn’t pay five cents to listen to him myself.
I’ll say this about Howard Stern; he completely misses the point again and again. He’s funny, his air-staff are funny, but they’re funny when they’re talking about the everyday concerns and interests of people. Not when they’re cajoling some two-bit porn star into playing with herself on air or some crap like that.
It’s like his movie, Private Parts. Does anyone disagree with me that the best parts of that movie are his struggles with NBC and his difficulties with his wife? That the worst parts were the self-aggrandizing psuedo-porn sequences?
He moved to sirius to get away from censorship, so he could do more of the schtick. Howard, you’re at your best when you’re doing less! Yes, part of the appeal is your willingness to be totally frank and say crude things, but being obscene for the sake of being obscene gets boring real fast. The handful of longtime fans of the show I’ve talked to all agreed with my basic point; though they all seem to place the line differently, there seems to be a fairly universal agreement that the show’s at it’s best talking about the news, what’s on tv, what’s going on behind-the-scenes, etc.
Jeez, give the guy a break! He’s gotta pee once in awhile, doesn’t he?
There are very limited commercials on both XM and Sirius (well, now SiriXM or whatever). I have XM. There’s about six channels (of several hundred) that have a commercial once in awhile.