Well, for one thing, by his own choice he went from being a true iconoclast to being a straight-up lunatic.
If money’s your metric, then Howard Stern is the most successful radio personality in American media history. If you consider radio a creative art, then he’s the world’s wealthiest artist. He’s been compensated more money than anyone else in his medium — and by a VERY wide margin.
He makes $130 million annually from Sirius and has a net worth of $900 million. He owns a pair of apartment buildings in New York, 32 villas and properties in Minnesota, Texas, and Virginia, 16 mansions in Florida and California, and over 5,000 acres of real estate. His enormous mega-mansion in Palm Beach, Fla., is estimated to be worth $300 million. (A nearby property in Palm Beach — Mar-a-Lago — was appraised by New York Attorney General Leita James to be worth just $75 million.)
Stern has made more than Rush Limbaugh. More than Hannity, Beck, Imus, and Schlessinger combined. No radio talent has ever matched his checkbook.
For a time, he was so omnipresent in popular culture, that an article like this would never see the light of day. First of all, the premise alone would be preposterous — how the hell is Howard Stern irrelevant?! He’s everywhere! And second, journalists were terrified of Stern. If he turned his spotlight on you, it was brutal: His insanely loyal fans would terrorize you in public. Go ask Kathie Lee Gifford how fun it was to be caught in Stern’s crosshairs.
And really, that was the secret to his success: More than anything else, it was the connection Stern forged with his audience that made him so special. If he had an autograph signing or an appearance somewhere, thousands of his fans would huddle together in the pouring rain — waiting for hours — just to get a glimpse of their radio deity. His book “Private Parts” became the biggest literary smash-hit Simon & Schuster had ever published. His audience hung on to his every word. The emotional bond between him and his audience was unbreakable.
Or so we thought.
Then something strange happened: Howard Stern became the world’s first celebrity to go behind a paywall.
It was a clever move by Sirius: For satellite radio to succeed, they needed to figure out a way to convince audiences to pay for something that they’re accustomed to getting for free. So, if you’re Sirius, what’s the fastest, most efficient way to build a paying audience?
Answer: Find the biggest name in the talk-radio universe with the most loyal audience — fans so faithful, they’ll follow him anywhere — and sign him to an exclusive contract.
And that’s exactly what Sirius did. Stern left terrestrial radio and jumped to satellite in 2006.
Originally, this was pitched to his fans as an amazing new development for creative content: Before, Stern was limited by the FCC. Now, he’s finally free to do the show he’s always wanted to do — it’ll be wilder, crazier, and waaaay more explicit! Oh, can you imagine the antics Stern might pull without any risk of censorship?!
In his first few years at Sirius, Stern was hitting on every cylinder. Those shows were some of the finest of his career: Artie Lange, Eric the Actor (“Ack, ack”), Beetlejuice, Riley Martin, and their merry gang of goofy Wack Packers were skewering sacred cows and delighting millions of ultra-dedicated fans. Back then, when you walked around an office building, you’d usually find multiple people tuning to Stern over the Internet while wearing headphones (or hiding in the parking lot, listening to their Sirius radio), giggling and laughing.
And now?
Nobody under 40 listens to Stern. Nobody under 30 knows could even identify him in a lineup. But whereas older Americans — Gen X-ers and up — still remember Stern as a pioneering shock jock, younger Americans don’t remember him at all.
It’s like he never existed.
Might as well not have, in effect. Couldn’t have happened to a nicer asshole if you ask me, but YMMV. Oh, and: “terrestrial radio”? As I understand the thing, it’s more atmospheric than terrestrial, but maybe I’m just picking nits on that one.
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I never cared for Stern’s schtick. He’s a one trick pony without the benefit of a nice pony.
I never really went for the whole shock jock thing really.
The whole “shock” thing had been done from rock like Alice Cooper and David Bowie to comedy like Lenny Bruce and Richard Pryor and even George Carlin. We had Punk and we had horror films that got increasingly gorier and graphic.
He was a third stringer glomming on to something that had been done, Done, DONE to death already.
X1000
I not only never liked the SOB, I despise the SOB. His “show” was watched for one thing, a show of tits and sex talk. That’s it.
Also, he’s as ugly as a monkey butt.
About as shocking as a 7th grade boys locker room talk
Stern’s always been irrelevant.
He just pioneered making his genre of sleaze into the world’s biggest Only Fans phenom before it was cool.
The only good thing I can say about him is he’ll die someday, and no matter his personal fortune, he can’t take it with him.