Tuesday, December 7, 2010

BABA BOOEY BYE BYE: Howard Stern says he's not going to take a paycut from his current $100M/year deal with Sirius/XM to provide his talent, while Sirius/XM says "you're taking a paycut if you want to stay on our airwaves." Now, I'm no fan of Stern (found him far more interesting before he divorced his long time wife and married the hot, much younger lingerie model), but I think it's an interesting question--where does he wind up--does he become the biggest, most expensive, podcast ever? Does he take his act to cable TV? Does CNN want the ratings juice enough that they'd turn over a couple of hours to him? Does he get his own TV network? Any idea on where this is winding up?

15 comments:

  1. Dan Suitor6:04 PM

    I don't have any answers, but I can tell you this: Howard Stern means very, very little to most young twenty-somethings these days. Maybe it's because radio has meant increasingly less and less to our culture, but I don't think Stern even registers for the majority of people our age.

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  2. Part of Sirius' incentive in luring him from broadcast radio was to sign up all the Stern devotees as new subscribers. Well, mission accomplished on that front.  So, no, he's not worth as much to them as he once was, and being on in such a relatively exclusive medium has locked him out of the general cultural conversation.

    Having seen his syndicated tv show back in the day, the man clearly belongs on radio.  

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  3. When I click on links within this website, my Norton antivirus tells me it's blocked an attempted Trojan attack on my computer.  Never happened before.  Anyone else experiencing this?

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  4. Another factor I failed to mention--I think Stern was much more interesting and creative when he had the tether of network restraints on him, forcing him to go somewhere other than the purely scatalogical/sexual.  Once he could say anything, he became less interesting.  (Contrast with someone like Alan Ball, who was a failure on network TV, but found a voice on cable by being able to be at least somewhat scatalogical/sexual.)

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  5. There's a second restraint which may have been more important: once he parted with his first wife, all the suggestive things he wanted to do with show guests were no longer merely theoretical.<span> </span>

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  6. But doesn't losing Stern mean losing a lot of those subscribers down the line? He's on an "extra tier" in their pricing structure ($2 extra a month) but I have to think a lot of devotees would leave Sirius XM if he wasn't there--and I'm not sure how well they'd survive without him.

    I don't think he's worth anywhere close to $100 million, but I don't think anyone else would pay him close to that, either.

    (I'm a basic subscriber, but never listened to Stern.)

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  7. Meghan7:16 PM

    I'm a longtime Stern listener and find his show much more interesting, by and large, these days.  I agree wholeheartedly that he got very boring after his divorce from Allison but his interviews are still top-notch.  He has an uncanny ability to get people to say anything, whether they plan to or not.  When he does porn star game shows, I turn it because it's been done and it wasn't that interesting the first time, but I love his interviews and the news with Robin.

    I think he ends up podcasting or on Apple TV.  I think he loses, in the end, because the magic of his show is not in what's planned but in what isn't planned.  There have been times that Howard, Robin, and Fred start riffing on something--like the time they ad libbed a Broadway show about god knows what--that had me in my car, crying and doubled over.  So whatever smaller broadcast the goes for will be structured with game or interview and the random playing off each other will be lost.

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  8. Meghan7:18 PM

    What I meant to say was that his show is more interesting to me now because he isn't always pushing the envelope to piss off the FCC.  Now it's just a bunch of people sitting around, shooting the shit for a while.  I think the move to Sirius was great in that he had the freedom to let the craziness go.  YMMV

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  9. Yes, me too.  My virus protection tells me it's called Trojan.Malcol, and the file names all begin with rounders2_corners, if that helps.

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  10. That's exactly what I've got.  Glad to know it's not just me.

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  11. Genevieve1:54 PM

    You're getting that clicking on any links from ALOTT5MA?  Or just this post? 
    Adam, Matt, Isaac, Alex, TPE -- are you seeing this?  I would so hate to stop clicking on links from this site, as y'all post the most amazing and hilarious and thoughtprovoking things.  I'm a little worried about a Trojan attack, though.

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  12. I'm seeing the comments about Trojan attack, but haven't had any problems with it, either on my home computer or my work computer.

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  13. I am getting the warning when I arrive at the site, and each time I click on a post on the site (not external links).

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  14. sconstant3:30 PM

    <span>Isn't this just standard shtick for him?  The public whining about contract negotiations?  It may be real and it may not be real, but it's certainly not surprising.  
     
    Anyway as I said w/r/t Oprah leaving network TV (mentioning Stern going to satellite radio and also mentioning Beckham leaving Europe to play football here), there are some times when people decide to jump ship from one context to another, even if the old context was better for their Q ratings, if the new context is better for their wallets.  Stern took the paycheck for the leap into irrelevance.  I don't think he can make as much as he can with satellite elsewhere anymore, so I think he'll stay.</span>

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  15. Meghan9:25 AM

    And he's back for 5 more years.

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