- Howard Stern by munificent
18 y
3,128 2 Messages Shown
Blog: Cold Water Blog
No Stern Warnings at Sirius
Howard Stern issued his first expletive as the most anticipated debut in recent radio history commences.
January 9, 2006
Howard Stern, the most popular radio personality in North America, did not take long to celebrate his new freedom from his old nemesis, the U.S. Federal Communications Commission.
The self-styled king of all media heaved his first legal expletive early in his maiden-programming voyage at Sirius Satellite Radio studios on Monday.
It came in response to a question about rumors that he got married to his longtime girlfriend, model Beth Ostrosky.
“I am not married. It’s a nice feeling that we get along great. We’re very happy and I don’t want to [blank] it up,” Mr. Stern is quoted as saying.
Mr. Stern is now officially out of the reach of the U.S. Federal Communications Commission’s decency guidelines. He was fined more than $2 million by the FCC while at Infinity Radio, his last employer.
But will the shock value of Mr. Stern using expletives on the air be enough to attract a significant portion of the 9 million listeners he had at Infinity? Or are listeners going to quickly become desensitized to it?
Cold Feet?
Back in November there were suggestions that Mr. Stern was getting cold feet after he was suspended for a day for talking too much about his job at Sirius. One New York newspaper said at the time that Mr. Stern sounded distracted on his show. The paper even suggested that the pressure of being hailed as the savior-in-waiting of Sirius was too much for the veteran shock jock.
The entertainment industry has been debating Sirius’s decision during October 2004 to sign Mr. Stern to a $500-million, five-year contract. At the time, Sirius had 2 million subscribers. Company executives said that if Mr. Stern attracted 1 million new subscribers, it would break even on the deal. The company now has 3.3 million subscribers.
Shares of Sirius rose $0.03 to $6.57 in recent trading.
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