I will sheepishly raise my hand and say I can’t get enough Benjy. And remember that he’s also head writer, so a lot of “Howard”'s humor is being fed to him by Benjy. I do wish he would just be a teeny bit real sometimes. He seems to be the only one on the show incapable of letting his guard down on air.
I also love that incredible goofball J.D. Just hearing his techno “theme song” cracks me up.
The one I can’t stand is Ronnie the Limo Driver. enough already.
HELLOOO!!! The FCC has imposed historic and record fines against Stern and his employers several times dating back to the 90s that ultimately totaled millions of dollars. That is not low-level in any sense. That is attempted censorship.
Did you make that up in your head or is that the kind of trash that gossip rags actually print? His wife left him, and IIRC he dated around for less than a year before meeting his next wife. His first wife remarried almost immediately, and they have an amicable relationship.
IMO the show has been better than ever since moving to Sirius. It has suffered a little bit at times from the “inside ball” that someone mentioned*, but I think that’s because he knows his career is winding down, he knows he’s not gaining tons of new fans all the time anymore, and I really think these satellite years are a Thank You to us old fans who have stuck with him. Is the show as “relevant” as it was in 2005? Probably not (but, incidentally, he DID have Robert Downey Junior on when Iron Man 2 came out), but I don’t care about Hollywood relevance. I’d probably like the show LESS if he had today’s A-listers on. I care about laughing, and he still makes me do that with enough frequency to fork over my 13 bucks a month.
*For instance I hate the Howard100 News and anything involving Jason or Will, and hope they all get dropped if Howard renews his contract.
Is there any way to subscribe to his show through the Internet instead of satellite radio?
Internet listening used to be free with a subscription; now it’s a few extra bucks a month.
he does 20-25 hours of programming weekly. Some of that is absolutely brilliant, and the best radio anywhere.
There’s also a lot of dumb stuff, making my channel up/down buttons come in handy. But if/when he leaves Sirius, i can see me ending my subscription (I was one of the first 250000 subscribers- loved it from the start, but Stern coming over made it fantastic)
This is false. He never had A-listers back in the day, or at best he had about the same number of A-listers as he does now. It took moving heaven and earth to get Julia Roberts on the show back in the day when she was already a megastar, but that’s about the only true A-lister to ever appear. The way it works is that a rising star does Stern, then other things in their career propel them to megastar status and they never go back. Guys like Jerry Seinfeld, George Clooney, etc… True A-listers have never done Stern.
Exceptions would be friends of the show like Ben Stiller. Actually, I think Stiller might be the only A-list friend of the show.
Keep in mind that his competitors were copying him. The radio format Stern does was pioneered by the man himself; nothing like it had ever been on the air before.
Why do you not credit him for bringing Stern fans to Sirius?
Personally I thought he had gotten way too political toward the end of his terrestrial radio career. I was glad when he stopped doing that. The more recent tiresome subject for me has been therapy. It got really bad for a while, but he’s eased off a bit. Still too much, but it’s better than it was in, say, 2008.
I watched him on E!. I liked some of his bits on Private Parts as well, but on E! it was nearly completely sanitized, and he hardly talked. His entourage would be making little comments the entire time and talking over each other so I couldn’t understand what anybody was saying. The guest star would just be looking back and forth trying to figure out who to answer.
I never heard his radio show (I mainly know about him from Private Parts and his Fartman character) but E! completely made me lose interest in him. It seemed like his show was schizophrenic.
I think one way to understand Howard is to understand based on his competition. Media in US is in general horrible and very un-interesting. In a climate where someone like Larry Bird is concidered “hardball”, Jay Leno is one of the mayor outlet for interviews with the stars. Its soul crushing to watch/hear, and absolutely ridicolous, nothing is for real and everything is fake.
I find Howard in many ways a genius to fill this gigantic hole in the market, where people are tired of fluffer interviews and lame, safe jokes.
Im not saying Howard is a comedic genius, I dont think he is very fun at all. But I do give him cred for taking advantage of this market, Where most networks treat their audience like shit. Howard found a giant gap and used it, maybe a sign of genius.
No matter if you are a Howard fan or not, you should be able to appreciate if Howard had a major impact on mainstream comedy.
Im pretty sure he did.
Seriously, what are you talking about, either he is a good entertainer or he is not ( Im not clear on this issue myself) But to base your opinion on some moral grounds Is not really helpful, is it. Maybe I missed something but I do realize that this is showbuisness and keep it at that.
My point was that it was enough harassment to keep a lesser show from trying it, but not nearly enough harassment to keep a show as successful as Stern’s off the air. As a result, it had the net impact of helping Stern, since he got a lot of listeners that would otherwise have been drawn off by smaller competitors.
You seem to be making a point about censorship, while my point was just about the impact on the market.
Even if this is true, it doesn’t change the point I was making.
But is it even true to begin with? I am aware that Stern himself constantly claims this, but I don’t know if it has a historical basis.
No two shows will ever be exactly alike, and there’s no doubt that Stern is unique in some ways, but I don’t know that anyone who does something similar is copying him. I’ve heard Stern and Imus, and ISTM that the former is just a low brow version of the latter. And I believe Imus was first. (Which again is not to say that Stern doesn’t have some unique aspects as well.)
Opie & Anthony weren’t deterred by the fines levied on Stern.
Imus was only first on the air. The format he does now didn’t exist until he saw it work for Stern. Before that he just spun records and did dopey bits with silly voices. This is what NBC wanted Stern to do, too, but you can see how well that worked out in his movie.
It seems you can get get both internet and satellite listening for the standard rate (12.95/month) The extra fee (2.99/month) for internet listening seems to be only for premium internet listening, which just means higher quality, as far as I can tell.
(There some less expensive plans that are satellite-only, but I don’t see an internet only plan.)
There is currently a free 30 day trial for the internet listening:
https://home.sirius.com/sirpromosetupview.do?utm_campaign=SIR30DAYTRIAL&utm_source=HNSI&utm_medium=web#
(I got a lifetime membership when I first got mine. So I get both satellite and internet for free now. 
Sadly, I don’t think they have that deal anymore.)
I really like the Stern Show.
His celeb interviews are almost always top class. I actually prefer shows when there’s nothing much happening and they are just shooting the shit and Howard is ranting about whatever is the flavour of the day.
I generally skip the stripper/porn stars interviews but they recently had a spot with the inventor of the sybian and a porn star and that was the funniest thing I’ve heard in a long time “Fuck me Raven… Let the poison out”. I just wish that Little Lupe had of had her day with the inventor “I love cock… wohhooo!” 
Yesterday most of the show was the IQ results of the staff and some wackpackers. That was a great show.
It can be horrible and very offensive but that’s no always a bad thing.
It’s by far the best thing I listen to and I’m there to the end now.
I wouldn’t go that far. He’s had Paul McCartney at least 3 times that I remember, sitting US senators, NY govenors, Martha Stewart, Barbara Walters, Aerosmith, Bon Jovi . . . and that’s just on Sirius. He’s definitely had a lot of A-listers over the years.
I’ve seen it argued that he based some of his format on listening to tapes of Steve Dahl and Garry Meier in Chicago (though I think the similarities aren’t huge).
You misunderstand. I acknowledge he brought a number of his fans with him to Sirius. My question was: how many of them are still subscribing today?
Alex Bennet would beg to differ ;). I used to listen to Bennet off and on in his SF days and really can’t attest to who ripped off whom, but he definitely took the occasional potshot at Stern.
Stern himself never did much for me. I recognize his talent and a friend of mine is a BIG fan ( taping some segments for re-listening ), but I could never get past the too frequent assholery and juvenile bits.
I’ve been listening on and off since WNBC in NY back in the day. When he went to satellite, I had no intention of purchasing the service just to listen to his show. A couple of years later, I decided to subscribe to XM instead of Sirius because I liked their programming options better. When they merged I got the Stern show again and I didn’t find it much different than when it was on public radio. I do like the interoffice bickering and drama and the contests better than the fart jokes and the porn stars. However, I think his move was a brilliant one financially. He works less, gets paid more and has complete control over his show. Enough listeners followed him to make everyone happy.
I think he is talking about retiring again but he has been saying that since he was on public radio. What did happen to Artie Lang? Did he get fired for drugs? I read his book and then it seemed like he was no longer on the show.
He had a breakdown and attempted suicide 6 months ago or so. I haven’t heard any recent updates. He wasn’t fired, but I doubt he’s coming back.
This is pretty much how I feel about him. His interviews cut through bullshit that I regularly skip on Leno or Letterman. He’s also not afraid to show his true side and let himself be emotional. His 9-11 show was riveting. Most other media members may have speculated about attacking the ones responsible, but they tried to put on a stoic face and report. Howard was the only big time media figure who said whoever did this, we’re going to go kill them and fuck them up completely