Howard Stern Going to Sirius for $500M
$500 million? Man, Sirius is not exactly raking it in right now. It’s a pretty big contract, and needing one million new subscribers just to break even seems rather expensive right now. It’d be ironic if Sirius didn’t survive to the time that Howard Stern is supposed to be on, which is January 2006. And what’s Stern gonna bitch about when he is on satellite radio? Especially if John Kerry wins the election?
The satellite radio race is going to be interesting, as XM is clearly winning handily now. Not that I subscribe to either, but I’d be closer to getting XM rather than Sirius. Also interesting to note what people buying new cars will do, as some cars come with XM built-in and not Sirius. Two fugly antennas on top of cars to get Sirius, too?
I’d rather have seen Howard announce a deal to go to premium cable, like HBO or Showtime, to have an hour or so of an uncensored video show every night (perhaps showing same-day coverage of his radio show even). E!’s Stern show is just lame with all it’s censoring. Though I guess people are paying for pay-per-view rentals of Stern’s uncensored show on Movielink or whatever, seeing it on a laptop or monitor gets to be an eyestrain for an hour or whatnot. You don’t even get to DOWNLOAD the uncensored video footage, you only get to rent it. Ugh. He could alienate more fans by turning his whole website into a pay site, but I don’t exactly see that happening. Hey, as several of my friends do, they just leech the day’s episode on MP3 via the howard-stern Usenet newsgroup, which is probably what I’d do if I wanted to listen to a Stern broadcast on Sirius…
Also, apparently the HowardStern.com Forum doesn’t exactly follow Howard’s mantra of free speech, since you really can’t talk bad about Stern or pretty much anyone the moderators there deem offensive. See screenshot above, click image to enlarge (thanks lowmazda). The post was nuked shortly after posting. TimmyTheCatRules was pretty funny. 
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The $500 million, five-year deal, announced by Stern and Sirius on Wednesday, lures Stern away from Viacom Inc.’s (NYSE:VIAB – news) Infinity Broadcasting, and will propel a subscription-based radio business modeled on cable television.
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I dunno bout you but Sirus can really expand as a result of this. Earlier in July it was announced that Eminem is also getting his own show/channel to run on Sirus (along with his G-unit-ers). If I’m someone trying to get into that industry, Sirus would be higly attractive just because of the talent they are already locking down. Stern won’t miss a step and I think he’ll prosper there. There is no talk-radio-show as relevant, just clones, that really only deserve notice when it’s a BOS episode on.
HAIL THE KING
sha
Comment by shab00ty — 10/7/2004 @ 10:08 pm
Stern is going down. It was a huge mistake to goto sattelite for someone w/ as large of a market as stern has. 14 million people. That is huge money as far as advertisers are concerened. You cut that down to 1-2 million and out advertising revenues reflect the drop in listeners.
Who knows if sirius will even be able to make it through sterns tenure. Lets face it, people are cheap will they pay $12.00 a month to hear stern, or will they just turn on the next morning show? Also why is every show that is funny considered a stern clone? Did stern invent humor?? Out of all the radio shows in the seattle area I don’t know of one of the morning shows I would consider a stern clone.
Also g-unit belongs to .50 cent not eminem. D12 is the group that eminem spawned.
Comment by RayJonesy — 10/12/2004 @ 6:19 am
the main prob I have with your argument which nixes all of your other points, ..actually g-unit belongs to eminem …because they are all signed to shadyville entertainment… and I already read the news release about eminem’s sirius show/channel, and it will be him and 50 and the rest of the g-unit’rs …I’m not saying em’s in g-unit, I’m saying he in a way is the godfather of g-unit
and the all will be on the sirius show….
holla
sha
stern still r0xors
Comment by shab00ty — 11/4/2004 @ 7:40 pm