Stern has 2 Channels programming over 20 hours of live radio every day. He has taken other Stern-esque talents such as Scott Ferrall and Jay Thomas and provided them with an avenue for expression free from the hand of FCC bureaucrats and government sanctions.

Stern hates for people he has on his payroll to be out of work. He wont leave Sirius because any sort of podcast/streaming internet vehicle will leave the people he has given work to through his two channels out fighting on their own. Stern might not be for everyone, but he is loyal to his employees. See the E! show/ HowardTV transfer of talent as proof.

But Stern and Buchwald are not dumb. They’ll create leverage if there isnt any to begin with.

Stern is not in the news as often, but that has more to do with the end of publicized draconian FCC crackdowns than his lack of relevance. His irrelevance to you is only due to your lack of interest in him, as his relevance to me is do to the fact that I have listened to him for 15 years. Regardless, anyone who has at least 2 million people a day listening live can hardly be labeled irrelevant.

Moreover, the reality of a post-Stern terrestrial landscape is where his relevance is really noticeable. If Stern is a replaceable throwaway personality with no talent, why hasnt anyone filled the vaccuum that was created with Stern’s departure? There has yet to be a Leno to replace the Carson of morning radio.

As far as my cheerleader-esque comments, I’m sorry if it seemed a little distateful for discussion sake, but in my defense, I did write the words “Howard Stern’s Penis” on a post before the one you refered to. I am biased as a Stern Fan, just as you probably have a bukkake bias due to the fact you take loads to your face. BaBa effin Booey.

@FilmBuffRich — he talked about a Daily News article on his possible future plans, and sounded pretty excited about the possibilities of a podcast/download service. Of course, I think he’s full of it — the guy is trying to negotiate a favourable deal for himself his agent Don Buchwald probably gives him his talking points LOL.

Your postings sound like those of a Stern intern assigned to prop up the brand. “I plug in my blackberry into my radio for music when I’m not laughing at the Stern show.” Almost sounds like ad copy.

But the big elephant in the room here is Stern’s overall irrelevance since going behind the Sirius pay wall.

A streaming Stern app on Blackberry or iPhone takes care of this issue, I suppose. I plug my blackberry into my radio for music when I’m not laughing at the Stern show.

As far as Stern being a “company crusher”, its not true. Stern is a self contained entity on Sirius. He, unlike the other channels, has commerical sponsors. They basically pay for the programming costs of the radio program.

But lets say your very lowball number of 2 million people pay 13 bucks a month to Sirius exclusively for Stern. Thats still in excess of 300 million a year in revenue due to Stern alone. Hardly company crushing.

I’ll venture a guess you are a bitter radio jock making 30 grand a year.

His “History of Howard Stern” radio-doc is an excellent filler when he takes vacation 12 weeks a year. It uses old tapes from K-Rock and WNnnnnnBC days. It’s amazingly done.

I’d pay for Andrew Sullivan’s blog, its how I got to this story.

Oh, and… BABA BOOEY BABA BOOEY!!! HOWARD STERNS PENIS!!!

Of course, he can always stream a show live and then have it available as a downloadable pod cast almost immediately afterward.

But that still leaves out the live listening in the car element which he has said has always driven his performance. (“Making the guy stuck in his car on his commute laugh.”)

While I don’t see him making this move, I would still follow.

*And one who doesn’t fit into tryaluckystrike’s alleged hardcore fan base who have written off the Sirius show as subpar.

A thought experiment. Having made the above statement, I wonder: have you gone to TWIT and made a donation? If not, why not?

I wonder, too: if people have goodwill toward the creators of free product, and they have disposable income that they would readily spend on the same ‘pay-walled’ product, if they don’t seek out a way to send that money to said creators regardless of obligation, are they really as willing to pay for it as they believe?

It seems to me that the same case works for taxes: if you’re really okay with increasing tax rates, why not voluntarily send more of your paycheck in to the government (did you know you can? It’s true!)?

I’m not being belligerent here. I’m genuinely curious. I think it’s telling that, in my own mind, as much as I like a piece of free content (a podcast, or a blog) – even to the point of telling myself, ‘wow, this is good enough to pay for’ – if I imagine it going behind a pay-wall, I immediately think: nope. Not gonna pay.

How many of us out here in the InterTubes are like that? I’d wager that the instance of a single, solid blocking page (not an ad-link clickthrough, but a legitimate stopper that forces you to pay or go away) diverts more than 95% of traffic, maybe even 99%.

But I could be wrong.

p2p can use clients to provide the required bandwidth, so Stern’s broadcast to 70M could easily start from a residential DSL line.

Digital satellite radio is a good concept, but it has been an interim one at best until the means are available for the Internet to be accessible everywhere, even in cars. And it hasn’t helped that the FCC has hindered that medium by only giving out TWO licenses (when there were supposedly FOUR bidders), which has now become ONE failing government-endorsed monopoly.

Thanks, BTW, for great content, Jeff. PS did you see this article by UK homourist Giles Coren on looking at the paywall debate from the newspaper columnist’s side: http://bit.ly/8ytN5

In late 2009, we’re still following Howie math? There’s no way that many people are listening to him. Every commissioned survey has credited him with having 1.25 to 2 million subs depending on the source.

The 6-8 million number factors in people who flip through the dial, end up on one of his channels and listen in for a few minutes or even a few seconds. That’s not a listener and certainly not someone who ordered satellite specifically to listen to him.

It’s misinformation like this that leads Sirius to ponying up a company-crushing half a billion dollars for 4 days a week and roughly 26 weeks a year of programming that even his most hardcore fanbase has written off as subpar.

http://blogmaverick.com/2009/08/08/my-advice-to-fox-myspace-on-selling-content-yes-you-can/
I agree with Mark’s point about bundling services. I pay for cable & SiriusXM because they have content I want. I pay for the sports tier on Time Warner becuase I want that (though the NFL network doesn’t understand that) I pay for the ESPN insider because I like the article and there is no good sports news aggregation site. The smart media companies will do this, even ones with newspapers and newsites.

As for the Stern idea-Oprah Winfrey, Martha Stewart, Jim Rome, Rush Limbaugh, Dan Patrick, Tyra Banks could do that (Rome actually has a subscription service and does very well). The levels would be different.

BTW good luck with the robot digging in your crotch stuff.

I wonder if Howard or XM bought the K Rock archives.

I wouldn’t be surprised if a new deal with XM would include a DirecTV channel.

I think this only makes financial sense for Howard. The Jon Stewart and the others that people may pay for would lose at least 90% of their audience if they went internet-pay. Ricky Gervais tried to move his very popular podcast to a pay model a few years back and lost basically all of his listeners.