The staff IQ show today was hilarious. The show is still hilarious on occasions, as much as it ever had been imho. I think Sirius now has something like 20m subsribers and had less than 1m when he was signed? Plus I think his channels are the most listened to of those available. Sirius has since consumed the once-bigger XM. I believe I heard the number of people who listen to Stern daily are a number of times greater than those that watch all of the late night talk shows combined? Robert Duvall, John Favreau are a couple of the recent guests I recall, so he still gets A-Listers…
I haven’t listened to him since they pulled his show from the Twin Cities in the late 90’s. I still watched the E show when it was on, but lost interest in that when it got so all they were ever doing was showing strippers.
Stern is definitely a mixed bag. He’s probably the best celebrity interviewer out there. He has a way of getting past the bullshit, scripted answers and drawing out honest, frank discussions. A lot of his commentary on the news is good. He can be excruciatingly funny at times. He is unquestionablly talented.
The flip side is that he’s also mean-spirited, self-aggrandizing asshole a lot of the time. The constant demeaning of women stopped being either funny or titillating 20 years ago, and he’s often just pointlessly, sadistically cruel to people who don’t deserve it.
At one point I endured the crass and obnoxious aspects of him and the show because I thought other aspects were still very strong (bits like the KKK guy doing movie reviews were hilarious), but eventually it seemed like the crap was overwhelming the good stuff.
I actually was really disenchanted with him when he dumped his wife to go bang groupies too. For a long time, one of his saving graces was that he was (ostensibly anyway) a loyal family man who snickered at the strippers, but always went home to his wife. Once he left his family, he became just another celebrity sleazeball. The hypcrisy was that he always use to bash other male stars for ditching their first wives and families after they hit it big, and how he was such a better person than they were. Then he did the same thing.
The only time I listened to Howard Stern was when he was a local DJ at WWDC (DC-101) in Washington, DC in the early 80’s. As I recall, he was pretty damn funny.
This did not happen. Cite?
I think his wife was actually the one who initiated the amicable divorce, and not because he had cheated or wanted to cheat on her but because he had grown too distant or something along those lines.
He certainly did not “leave his family” to bang groupies. If that was the case there would have been an avalanche of press about it, and there is not a schintilla.
While he did date some women after his divorce and before remarrying, some more famous than others, there were no groupies. No way.
Whatever you say, Gary.
Howard Stern’s penis!
Seems like his show is designed for 14 year old boys or people who still act like they are 14.
18.9 million subscribers as of 1Q 2010, up slightly versus the same time in 2009 (though that still puts them down slightly versus the 19 million they had at the end of 2008.
http://investor.sirius.com/releasedetail.cfm?ReleaseID=466135
Comparison to older numbers is hard (since their subscriber base now includes both the Sirius and XM networks), but the question I’d ask is not how many subscribers Sirius had before Stern came on, but how many they had after he’d been on for a little while (and Stern fans had subscribed), versus now.
According to this chart:
…the two services, combined, were at about 14 million subscribers at the end of 2006.
Extremely unlikely. According to this:
http://tvbythenumbers.com/2010/07/29/ratings-report-for-abc-news-nightline-for-the-week-of-july-19-23-2010/58532#more-58532
The three major networks’ late-night shows drew just over 10 million viewers a few weeks ago. The only way Stern outdraws late-night TV is if well over half of all Sirius XM subscribers are listening to him…even if his is the highest-rated channel on Sirius, that’s still not very likely. Even if every single Sirius XM subscriber was listening to Stern, he’d only be outdrawing all of late-night TV by a factor of about 1.8 to 1, not really “a number of times greater”.
I’ve been listening regularly for about 17 years. I made the jump to sirius primarily for Howard, and the show improved immeasurably once they weren’t censored anymore. It wasn’t just a stream of profanity, in fact in the early months on satellite, Howard often chastised his crew for gratuitous profanity. It’s the absolute freedom they have, not only in terms of language and content, but in terms of format. By having two 24-hour channels to fill, they’ve been able to take “risks” like giving hour-long shows to assorted looneys. (risk in quotes because that’s the beauty of it: it’s not a risk at all. they don’t have to worry about instantaneous ratings, only overall subscribers.)
You definitely don’t hear as much about him in the mainstream media as you used to in the 90’s, partially because he lost a lot of the casual listeners in the move, partially because there are now other similar shows, partially because he’s not getting in trouble with the FCC anymore, and partially because he just doesn’t need to promote himself like he used to. You see “fartman” descend from the rafters at the MTV awards, and maybe you tune in the dial to give him a listen and get hooked. But you’re not going to buy a satellite radio and subscription based on a silly stunt.
He’s got his loyal listeners, and that’s all he really needs.
He does still get big name stars, perhaps not as often as he used to, but that only makes sense given the smaller market. In fact, it’s funny Stephe96 mentions Robert Downey, Jr., because he was on the show recently. (via phone, yes, not in person, but still…) but he’s such a good interviewer, he can get as good or better stories out of random people than big name celebs.
Yes, sometimes he’s an asshole, but almost always a funny asshole, which is why I listen. Yes, the sybian got old really quick, and yes, sometimes they focus too much on the office life. But hey, they’ve got a lot of time to fill. Yes, I miss Artie Lange. He was a huge addition to the show, and hopefully he’ll return someday. Heck, hopefully the whole show returns. Howard’s 5-year contract is almost up, and it’s a constant topic of conversation: will he leave or will he stay?
boilercake is right about the divorce, as far as I can tell. He still is very involved with his children and talks amicably of his ex-wife. It’s sad that the fairy-tale ending of Private Parts didn’t last, but it doesn’t seem to have been “leave his family and bang groupies.” And, Leaffan, he didn’t get “kicked off” the airwaves either. He left of his own accord, much to the chagrin of his former employers, who tried desperately to replace him but never found anyone among the imitators with his longevity.
He’s the king of what he does, and he doesn’t pretend to be anything he’s not. If you like what he does, you won’t find anyone better. If he’s not your cup of tea, as he’s always said, you are in control of the radio dial and are free to change the channel.
The tv show he did on WWOR in the early 90’s was funny as hell.
I heard his show a few times. I thought it was crude and juvenile. Apparently I’m not in his target demographic.
Indeed…another discussion could be devoted to the various people that CBS hired to replace Stern in that time slot in various markets.
In Chicago, Stern’s show was one of the tentpoles (along with Steve Dahl in the afternoon) of talk-oriented WCKG. CBS replaced Stern on WCKG with Shane “Rover” French, who lasted only 7 months. Not too long after that, the station itself changed format, a change precipitated by post-Stern ratings losses, and got rid of all their on-air personalities.
I always felt that the FCC was really propping Stern up, by clearing out his competitors. Stern himself was big enough that he could endure the constant low-level harassment that the FCC was capable of, but this sent a message to stations that they could expect this type of treatment for this type of show. As a result, the market for small time shows of this sort was dried up, and Stern could get all the listeners who wanted this type of show. If there was unlimited freedom to produce these shows, Stern might have still been the best, but he would have lost some of his listenership to fans of smaller shows.
I imagine sattelite radio would be harmful to him in this manner.
How popular and relevant he still is is best shown by earning power. Reiterating the above, when Sirius Satellite Radio wanted to explode in popularity they went after Stern. He signed a half billion dollar contract (over several years, but still half a billion dollars), and they earned their money back from new subscribers.
I think that at his worst he’s a bore and a boor and I can’t stand him; at his best he’s absolutely brilliant and asks the questions/says the things other interviewers and hosts just think. A lot’s happened since Private Parts- divorce and Sirius being perhaps the biggies.
I listened to him every workday morning for six years. I’d avoided him up to that point, because I’m at least a moderately liberal guy, and I’d heard so many bad things.
When I did finally tune in, what I learned was that the ugly stuff I’d heard about him was about 1/3 true. He really does have a kind of mean side that he exercises on a personal level, meaning he’ll be a dick directly to people’s faces (but of course also behind their backs). I would often change the channel during those exchanges.
Another 1/3 of his schtick was boring, most often inside baseball or long-winded nostalgia about him and Fred and a 50-watt station, or too much Gary.
But…that other 1/3! He is an AMAZING interviewer in terms of getting people to say things they’d never say elsewhere in a million years, and some of the show’s comedy pieces were brilliant (and that includes Stuttering John…I wish I could find that clip with John Amos)(and oh man, the Pat Cooper meltdown…anyone remember that?), and his bitter, self-denigrating monologues could be hugely compelling. And that’s why I kept going back, because the good was really that good.
Yeah, that’s about my summing up. I listened a few times over the course of a year, and he was interviewing a stripper or a porn star every time. A frat boy I am not, so I gave up.
Ron and Fez, 11-3 XM 202
Good sir, there is simply no such thing.
Sigh But would it kill him to fire Benjy Bronk? The man’s an irritating creep, and not-at-all funny, to boot.
I do appreciate the sentiment. Honest I do. But how many baba-booey-screwed-up-let’s-yell-at-him moments can you take?
True.
But I’ll take a good Howard/Gary go 'round any day over one more minute devoted to the likes of Benjy or J.D.
He can, however, devote as much of his daily airtime to Sal and Richard as he cares to.