Is Howard Stern still a commodity?

Caveat:  I have listened live to Stern exactly once, in my brother-in-law's car, for about two hours, as I drove from Arlington to Richmond VA, to be with my daughter Jennie upon the birth of her daughter.  I was mildly amused, but not overly impressed by Stern on the air.

I've followed Howard's career from the beginning and read his book and watched his movie, neither of which tracked his career truthfully.  Stern was a rebel, fair enough description, who always felt constricted in his expression and just wanted to say the "F-word" so he could say he said the "F-word" in the clear on a radio broadcast. Anybody who held him back from that goal was his enemy.

To his great fortune, he came under the wing of another man with no morals, Mel Karmazin.  Mel encouraged Stern to do his thing and made a huge amount of money for himself and for CBS syndicating the Stern show to broadcast outlets across the country.  No matter that there had to be set several levels of censorship, just in case Stern said something untoward; the local stations even had their PD's sitting on a button to drop out anything Stern might say that might cause a problem for a licensee (the network couldn't be challenged or fined for anything Howard said, only the stations that aired the offending comment would and the cost might be in the hundreds of thousands of dollars).

The network didn't have an FCC license but the local stations did.  They were the facilities that made Stern and Karmazin rich, paying the fees to CBS and carrying the network spots, and the facilities were ultimately responsible for the content.  If Stern said the "F-word"  in NYC, it was the local station's owner who carried the burden of paying the fine if it aired locally.

What a crock.  And what a waste of a PD's workday and an engineer's skills.

Mel Karmazin moved on to SatRad (and that's a whole 'nother story) and Howard followed him.  Or was it the other way around?  Doesn't matter. Mel gave Howard pretty much full control over his own show and the additional SatRad channels that were added to Stern's deal.

Plus he gave Howard a new studio, complete with a stripper pole.  Very impressive.

Of course, without FCC authority reigning Stern in, Howard was able to finally say the "F-word" on his show. Yippee.

Back in the day, Stern had millions of listeners on freely available broadcast radio stations and his salary was worth every penny he was paid.  Now he has a few tens of thousands of paid subscribers on SatRad and is paid tens of millions of dollars a year.

Stern's deal is coming up for renewal.  So just how in love with Howard is Mel?

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