I went back to work after Christmas break this morning and I see Howard is off the air on the two stations that come in well on my car radio. One is from Providence, and the other, frankly I’m not sure. The one from Boston that has iffy reception had him on and he was just talking to Cabbie who’s in a mental hospital. Did he say anything about being dropped by more stations?
I thought a little while back he’d made some big announcement that he was taking his show to one of the two new subscription radio services. Checking his website (dunno if that’s worksafe, but the URL is pretty obvious), that does appear to be the case.
That’s not until his contract is up. Then he’ll be going to Sirius. Later this year, or beginning of next, I’m unsure of the exact time frame.
However, a lot of stations (Clear Channel Stations) are dropping him because of all the shit with the FCC. I want to say somewhere around 20 stations dropped him in the past few months.
Well, yes, that is happening, but not for another year. His website isn’t current to this morning. He’s going to Sirius and as soon as he’s ready to go, so am I.
Hmm, my mistake. Mauvaise’s explanation seems the most likely. I would skim Stern’s official site to see what that spin is on the situation but (considering what I saw of the content in my quick hop over there) I fear I’ll trip some filters at my workplace.
I can’t help you with what’s going on, but marksfriggin.com is a very comprehensive site on all things Stern.
Actually, Howard was dropped from the six Clear Channel stations that carried his show about a year ago.
Another company that owns two or three of the stations that Howard’s on has been pissed at him about his announcement that he’s going to Sirius after his current contract is up so they’ve been retaliating. First they started cutting off his show at 10am (even though he generally runs to 10:30 or 11). Then they started bleeping out any mention he made about Sirius.
Now today, they replaced his whole show with some other DJs and sent Howard a bill of $200,000 for “advertising” Sirius on their radio stations.
Santos is correct. The company that’s dropped him is Citadel Broadcasting, which owns the Providence station that was carrying him. Howard spent some time yesterday and today talking about the Citadel fiasco and Citadel’s CEO, Farid Suleman, who used to work for Infinity, and apparently accidently sent Howard a $1 million paycheck back when he was Infinity’s CFO.