Howard Stern, radio martyr
This is hardly any big scoop, but Forbes.com is running a story about how Howard Stern is being silenced for talking too much about his move to Sirius.
Howard was taken off of Citadel stations, including the new rock station here, last year. The main difference here is that Infinity, his own bosses, have taken him off this time.
The part about all of this that I find most ridiculous is not the fact that Howard Stern is convinced that he’s the greatest thing to happen to radio, but that Infinity seems so inclined to believe him. Howard’s got a fairly rabid fan base, but I really, really doubt that they’re going to follow him to Sirius in the numbers he’s expecting. You can’t write a story about Howard Stern without mentioning Sirius, and by shutting him down, even temporarily, they’re only providing more press for him and his move to satellite. The people who will buy a satellite system have either already bought it, or are at least sold on the idea.
I really wonder how many people would really invest $100 or so in the receiver and then pay the $13 a month for Sirius service, just to listen to Stern. I’m also willing to bet that most of his listeners catch less than an hour, and more like a half hour, of his four-hour program every morning. I realize that listeners will get a lot more than that, with all the other music and talk channels, but is a half hour of Stern worth the initial investment? I really doubt it.
A bit of an aside: If you’ve ever listened to Howard Stern, you know that the commercial breaks are probably run about eight to 10 minutes at times. What’s that mean? It means that people change the station. People will sit through a minute or two of commercials, but once you start stretching the breaks out much longer than that, they start switching. They might switch back, but then they’re still not hearing the ads, which is really what the radio business is all about.
