Howard Stern Makes Debut on Sirius
Howard Stern made his long-anticipated Sirius debut this morning, with few surprises.
Howard Stern began his new satellite radio show on Monday by putting to rest rumors that he got married to his longtime girlfriend, model Beth Ostrosky. “I am not married. It’s a nice feeling that we get along great. We’re very happy and I don’t want to (expletive) it up,” said Stern, who is finally free of federal decency laws on Sirius Satellite Radio.
Stern has promised everything from stripper poles to live sex on his new show. His deal could be worth up to $500 million over five years to headline two Sirius channels. At the start of the show Monday, Stern dished up some of his usual fare, including phone sex with Playboy bunny Heidi Cortez, who has her own phone-sex nighttime show lined up on Sirius called “Tissue Time with Heidi Cortez.”
Stern also introduced George Takei as his new on-air personality. Takei, who played Captain Sulu on the popular television show “Star Trek” and who last year publicly said he is gay, will serve as announcer. After the first week, he will record segments for the show but will not be in the studio.
It is not clear how strippers and Playboy bunnies translate to the non-visual medium of radio, but Stern has managed to do it nicely for about a quarter century.
Previously:
“Tissue Time with Heidi Cortez.” .. WTF?!
A real tear-jerker, I guess.
Given Stern’s prior success, probably pretty well (the translation of stuff). X-rated podcasts do nicely, and some of those aren’t even done professionally. Just folks with a microphone and Garageband. People will love listening to sex on the air on their way to work.
However, there’s only so long that the novelty will last. Stern alone cannot save Sirius if the rest of their programming is subpar (so far, from what I’ve heard, it’s about “par”, but their traffic product is light-years behind XM’s). I think getting the NFL contract was their biggest stroke of genius — XM has the NHL and MLB, but football is the biggest sport in the country and Sirius has it.