A longtime Howard Stern fan follows him to his new gig at Sirius. The verdict? So far, so good ... but there's always room for improvement.
So, fellow listeners, who do you think paid for an abortion last year or got caught cheating on his wife?
More importantly, who now thinks of George Takei as a god?
Howard Stern has returned to the broadcast world. Having braved censorship and commercial breaks slightly shorter than a Homeric epic, Stern has finally landed at Sirius satellite radio with his assortment of misfits and technical/psychological problems intact.
It's been a little over one week since Stern departed terrestrial radio yet it feels much longer. Sampling his replacements was a painful ordeal; the nasally ramblings of Adam Carolla and the drunken incoherent diatribes of David Lee Roth are not serving CBS Radio well, to say the least. I lasted less than 15 minutes with each, the sound of my Recycle Bin emptying as I deleted Roth's inaugural broadcast from my hard drive my only satisfaction.
I am open to new ideas and voices, they just aren't on radio anymore. Los Angeles radio in particular is mind-numbing in its repetitiveness - you know you're in trouble when you have a station calling its 40-song playlist "real STAR variety." Not that the rock stations are any better; you can only hear Rush, Boston, AC/DC, the White Stripes or Audioslave so many times before you want to claw out your eardrums altogether. These stations have made me hate bands I love.
I'm not breaking any new ground in claiming radio a stagnant and homogenous wasteland. Years ago, I pitched an article about the death of one of the local rock stations in San Jose, California. 98.5 KOME was the station that introduced me to Howard Stern back in the early-'90s and was one of the last few independent Bay Area stations that got swallowed up thanks to the Telecommuncations Act of 1996. KOME was put to sleep because its new owners expanded into the market too quickly and they preferred the "prestige" their smaller, lower-signal San Francisco station afforded them over its San Jose counterpart. It's been downhill ever since.
Granted, radio stations die all the time. Station owners run out of money or the demographics change (in the Bay Area alone, two rock stations have switched formats to Mexican music), but never has it appeared more obvious before that the radio conglomerates are desperately trying to kill their own product from within. Why, I don't know. The suits running things feel confident that the unlistenable Frosty, Heidi and Frank really "shake up" middays and that "totally '80s weekends" aren't shameful attempts to milk the nostalgia my generation feels for an era when radio was subversive, intelligent and localized.
So I'm grateful Stern even returned at all. His fights with the Federal Communications Commission over free speech are legendary and I admire his choice to leave "Free FM" to preserve his freedom to speak. I disagree with the year-long commercial that fans endured leading up to his defection to satellite, but I can't deny the result. Baba Booey. Fred. Robin. Even Artie. The gang's all there and they're shooting the breeze just like they never left.
And that was the litmus test for me as to whether or not Monday's show would be successful. I didn't want a glamourized spectacle, I wanted the same hardware nightmares, incompetence and anger I've been listening to for over 10 years. For the most part, the show delivers. That doesn't mean there weren't problems, however.
What impressed me most was the sheer amount of nonsense. Bringing in George Takei was inspired, and the frank discussion of his homosexual lifestyle while Artie squirmed and shouted out gay slurs was one of the funniest hours of radio I've heard in a long time. Even better was the lack of profanity; the show seems determined to avoid degenerating into constant bad language. I just like hearing people's balls get busted, and hearing everyone goof on one another was great.
The biggest problem with the new show is Stern himself.
Stern is at his best when his conversations are with his coworkers, but there were several times during Monday's show when he interrupted the flow with lengthy monologues. It's saying a lot that this die-hard Jackie Martling fan found the blustery antics of his replacement as the show's highlights. Artie still has conversation in him and that's what's needed to drive the show.
Howard, I don't give a rat's ass if you talk to Larry King, 60 Minutes, David Letterman or Bill O'Reilly. Was the press conference even necessary? I've been listening to you pimp the glories of satellite radio for over a year, and hearing you waste an hour parroting that same line on your first broadcast in a new medium was simply ridiculous.
Want to talk about David Lee Roth? Conduct that conversation within the confines of your show; don't foist Penny Crone on us in a question-and-answer period for your answer. I do not care about your ancillary efforts like the Superfan Roundtable, Tissue Time with Heidi Cortez or Howard 100 News. I like your radio show, period. Spend that hour talking about your daughter's stupid Kabbalah play or your staff revelations, which for all the ballyhoo they generated on terrestrial radio amounted to an aside between chats. And please, shut the fuck up already about the Middle East. You don't know jack shit and I would have hoped you'd realize that after you trumpeted Bush's war line for two years only to change opinions overnight.
Just let Artie tell the pig story... and tell me who the hell woke up in a hospital room to find a friend of the same sex fondling their genitals.
Other than that, all was glorious, particularly Takei. Make him a regular immediately. He's the new Billy West, and every media outlet agrees with that assessment. Hold on to him as dearly as you held on to the rumors that you got married over the break and 2006 will continue with a bang.
I couldn't be happier to spend 43 cents a day to hear Howard Stern instead of the insufferable crap that's risen to taken his place. Even his soundchecks were more entertaining than Tom Leykis on his best day. The honesty, the idiocy and the goofing is what makes the show so successful. Here's hoping that Stern doesn't censor himself by becoming the show's only mouthpiece.
And see if you can bring Jackie back a few more times while you're at it, okay?
