After listening to a few interviews about Howard Stern, I have come to the conclusion he is a VERBAL ART MEDIA and is genius……..

He is honest, open and clever.

May we always be able to hear him.

In the new “no rules” environment, there is not as much cache to gain from being a rebel — without the law there is no sin and sin has always been a bit of the shtick.

I’m likely wrong, but I’m curious to see how long he milks the “religious right,” and the FCC and all the other rule-keepers who couldn’t make him bow but could give him energy. Now, no one wants him to bow; he’ll still be funny, but at 52 I imagine he got more energy from his rebel status than he may have suspected. He will tire more quickly now, I’m guessing.

I give him three years, max; after that, he’ll have middle-of-the-road ratings, his humor will be to satellite radio what Laugh-In humor became to evening TV and what stand-up became to cable; go all the way to porn and he’ll cut his audience; stay middle-of-the-road-raunchy and he’ll get those kind of ratings. Still funny, but no longer a standard-bearer.

It doesn’t detract from the significance of the move — I just wonder if this isn’t the end of being unique and the beginnnig of being just funny: rare enough, but no longer one of a kind.

I guess I answered my own question.

Listening to the O&A show today there were many times that they and callers reported hearing more O&A chants coming over the radio broadcast of Stern’s show. From tv coverage, you could see lots of O&A signs also, again according to O&A. One caller said Stern looked pissed as the bus left to go to the Hard Rock and another reported that it appeared that some of the chantes for Howard were coming from a prerecorded tape.

When Stern and O&A were both on Infinity, Stern hated them. They are hipper, younger, and funnier. Howard forced Infinity to put a gag order on O&A because they made fun of him all the time. What kind of comic “genius” and shock jock cannot take riibbing from his rivals? Howard is the first to claim he invented every gag that O&A do, but he cannot take their crap.

Now that their rivals again, it will be fun watching O&A riip good old (and do I mean old) Stern apart.

No comment necessary on that.

How empty anything involving Stern is. His humor was incredibly unfunny in the Jackie years and only improved when they got a real comic (Artie Lange) in the studio. Stern himself is as untalented as most everybody’s embarassingly dull uncle. Fred thinks he’s been a member of the Rolling Stones for the last 20 years and not a guy who hits buttons to make fart sounds four hours a day.

Stern conintually claims no one was doing what he did before him. The Real Dan Steele is Stern’s model. Stern even modelled his look after him. More recently Rush Limbaugh of all people was doing ‘Stern’ type things in Sacramento (on air abortions, etc.) and then syndicated across the nation years before Stern. Stern gets around these uncomfortable facts by saying Limbaugh was inspired by Stern’s Washington, DC show, like Limbaught in California doing his own show knew anything about an unknown Stern in DC. Stern’s fans buy it.

Stern can be entertaining. He’s good with celebrity interviews. Unfortunately you have to wait – or wade – through 95% of a show that is a long fart sound to be entertained by the 5% that is legitimately entertaining. His friend Ralph could have probably replaced Stern in the main chair and with the rest of the same cast the show would have kept its audience and been even funnier.

The execs who panicked and hired David Lee Roth showed they were the equal of Stern in their unimaginativeness and mediocrity. Stern mostly, with his juvenile power trips, poured cold water on the show. His main tool for staying around was, ironically, a person even dumber than him: Robin Quivers. She, as Ralph stated awhile back, ‘fills up the show’, despite being braincell-killing dumb (in the areas of politics and religion, which she insisted on preaching about each morning). She would have been hard to replace. But Artie and Gary and Fred (the mimic) plus a new host could have carried on. And they would have if the money had been offered. Another of Stern’s loathesome traits is his greediness and pleasure he gets in keeping his hirelings down.

Have fun in satellite radio, Howard. Where at any given time perhape – perhaps – a hundred thousand people will be tuning in…

and here is the irony… when opie and anthony worked for infinity… they were not allowed to talk about howard on the air. any time they mentioned his name, they were dumped. why? because howard ran to uncle mel and asked him to make opie and anthony stop making fun of his daughters. yup…. howard the censor.

tony… your hero is a phony.

it was heavily edited here in LA and no it wasnt because of cursing Jake

one ironic editing bit was when Robin said, “i can’t wait till we go to a place where we can say whatever we want.”

it was spliced to “i cant wait till we go.”

All these dinosaur stations proved exactly why Howard had to leave and about what’s wrong with radio today. the censorship over things that arent illegal or obscene is unbelieveable.

right.

The FCC’s existence took our control of media away. Once the government nationalized the spectrum, the only sense in which “we” have control over it is through the political process. You may not like the result of that process, but the loss of control happened much earlier.

BTW, Sirius is running ads in movie theaters promoting Stern, though you don’t see or hear him. Instead, you see a night sky in which the stars rearrange themselves into the shape of a penis, which then ejaculates. So the next time that tony or his ilk start whining about how Stern is stereotyped, they should take a look at how he is being marketed (without any complaint from Stern). I’ll defend Stern’s First Amendment rights (which were never violated), and congratulate him on the mega-millions flowing his way, but I’ll remained puzzled at those who choose to see him as some sort of martyr.

Unless Stern invented vulgarity and four letter words, then he’s just a disc jockey with enough audience who told the radio station owner where he can stick it and walked out of the building.

That certainly shows his power, but he’s not innovative and pioneering. The medium in which he delivers his schtick is innovative, not Howard, and there’s a difference.

The above scenario speaks exactly to the point I was going to bring up.

The Newspapers (or Radio here) aren’t dying because of bad journalism, but because of an empowered web-user who is disintermediating the relationship.

One caller call this damaging. I say it’s wonderful.

ebay allows us to sell an item without a Newspaper classified ad. Future versions of Structured Blogging will allow us to do this without ebay.

SharedNews, a name I’ve given to two-way or public feeds will allow us to fully collaborate on everthing from news, calendars and events, jobs and merchandise. The two-way web is here, and it’s here to stay.

So, moving to the web isn’t enough for newspapers. They must embrace the empowered individual and full allow them into the conversation.

slow down Safran… they were dumping out curses from the live audience. as you know… we can’t have curses over the air waves.

ramoooooone