He's the Barak Obama of retarded dwarves.
Posted on 10/25/2005 6:20:00 PM PDT by Callahan
In the middle of a Tuesday conference call announcing Infinity Broadcasting's plans to replace Howard Stern, a familiar voice appeared: Beetlejuice, the diminutive, snaggle-toothed fixture from the shock jock's nationally syndicated morning show.
He was quickly cut off, leaving Infinity Broadcasting Corp.'s chairman and CEO Joel Hollander to explain how the prank only demonstrated the significance of the company's plans for a post-Stern existence _ a radio world where rocker David Lee Roth and comedian Adam Carolla will take over 12 of Stern's 27 Infinity markets.
"I'm glad Howard thinks this call is important enough to put on Beetlejuice," Hollander said before lobbing a programming grenade at Stern's satellite radio venture. "Infinity will have no 24-hour channels of farting."
Infinity developed 10 replacement scenarios, from celebrities to sports talk to the DJ-free "Jack" format. Flamboyant former Van Halen frontman Roth debuts Jan. 3 on seven of its stations; the flagship WXRK-FM in New York, WBCN-FM in Boston, WYSP-FM in Philadelphia, WRKZ- FM in Pittsburgh, WNCX-FM in Cleveland, WPBZ-FM in West Palm Beach, Fla., and KLLI-FM in Dallas.
Roth appeared live on Stern's show before the conference call, and the shock jock wished his successor well. It's Roth's first gig as a radio host.
Carolla, known for his comedy work on "The Man Show" and "Loveline," takes over in Los Angeles (KLSX-FM), San Diego (KPLN-FM), Phoenix (KZON-FM), Portland (KUFO-FM) and Las Vegas (KXTE-FM). A virtual unknown, Ohio-based morning host Rover will relocate to Chicago. His show will also be carried in major markets like Detroit, Cincinnati and Memphis, Tenn.
The announcement was anticipated for a year since Stern announced his departure to Sirius Satellite Radio Inc., where he received a $500 million contract to begin in January 2006. Stern boasted an audience of about 12 million and revenues of about $100 million from his morning FM show.
His last live radio show for Infinity is set for Dec. 16.
Hollander declined to discuss how much Stern's defection would cost Infinity in revenue, although he said some advertisers who avoided Stern _ American Express and Mercedes Benz, for example _ might sign on with the new shows. He said the company was taking a long-range view of its future.
"It's not going to happen overnight," he said about the new lineups. "It's going to be a 12-to-24-month period until you really see what the shakeout is going to be."
Stern's departure also led Infinity to launch new programming dubbed FREE FM, a talk format that began Tuesday in Philadelphia and San Diego. Another seven stations will eventually join the FREE FM brigade, including WXRK-FM in New York _ long a mainstay of rock music in the nation's No. 1 radio market.
K-Rock, as the station was known, will make the switch when Roth arrives.
According to Hollander, the decision to use multiple options in replacing the self-proclaimed "King of All Media" came after Infinity tried to lure Jon Stewart of "The Daily Show" to move into radio.
"What Jon told us was to think about hiring multiple talents, not to try and hit a grand slam," Hollander said.
Infinity stations in Sacramento, Buffalo, N.Y., and Fresno, Calif., will replace Stern by using the "Jack" format, which features an expanded play list of hundreds of songs _ but no disc jockeys.
Washington-based morning hosts The Junkies will add Baltimore as an outlet, while WOCL-FM in Orlando will feature the team of Drew and Mel. KXBT-FM in Austin will air Star & Buc Wild.
Infinity, a unit of Viacom Inc., operates 178 stations nationally, the majority in the nation's top 50 radio markets.
Oops, meant to put a picture in.
:-D )))
I'm kind of sorry David Lee Roth isn't going to be on KLSX. Nothing against Adam Carolla, I like Carolla, but I think Diamond Dave and Los Angeles go together like...well, like Diamond Dave and strippers.
He's the Barak Obama of retarded dwarves.
If Howard farts on satellite and no one is around to hear it, does it still smell as bad?
I'm not surprised at all. At this point, he's done pretty much all you can do in broadcast radio (both industry and decency wise). The freedom to have fun doing his job is likely more important to him than other considerations. It's not like he needs the money. I think satellite radio will be successful anyway. He's not the only thing on Sirius.
And another thing. It's kind of lame that Infinity is now advertising it's stations as "free radio." The mere fact that they feel the need to point that out tells me they are a little worried.
Howard was talking about giving one whole channel to this alcoholic stroke-victim guy named "Jeff the Drunk" who is famous for not being able to stay awake on the phone. It's all a joke to Stern.
Stern is 51 years old. His spanking strippers schtick is getting creepy and he's having to surround himself with more and more people to make the show funny and work.
I hear him in the morning on the way to work. I do think some of his stuff is absolutely hilarious. But these days, its getting more rare and many times, he can go for hours without anything really entertaining happening.
His deal with Sirius is absolutely ridiculous. 100 million a year and advertisements have to be held to a minimum??
There is no way this will ever be a profitable venture for Sirius. The Sirius people who made the deal are retards. THey are spending other people's money like its the dot.com days.
But I do think that Stern has been getting repeatidly hosed by infinity and clear channel all through their deal with him considering the money he generates for them. Radio these days is a mess. Majority of stations are owned by a few corporations and there is soo much censorship and agendas involved. Half the airtime is advertising and the disk jockeys dont even pick the songs they play. Its all pre-programmed ahead of time and don't even get me started on the dirty relationship between radio station companies and the music labels who pay stations and disk jockeys to play the songs they are pushing. Yes, there has always been record labels working deals with stations, I know. But its never been on the level it has now because they are all owned by the same companies and parent companies now.
This has created the trainwreck that the music industry is these days. There is no concept of what the public wants to hear anymore. Everything is done from a marketing perspective, not a musical perspective.
Pretty close to all of it, though David Lee Roth's mother may listen now and then.
True, I'd imagine the freedom is paramount to him. Although Howard has always shown (to me at least) the need to be liked, loved, admired, slice it how you like. It was a prevailing theme of his movie "Private Parts" I'll bet he misses the large audience more than he'll admit.
I haven't listened to Stern for years.
What's a casette?
There he is!
Does anyone know anything about this "Rover" dude? Apparently we drew one of the short straws and got him come 1/3/06. Was at Best Buy today looking at the Sirius receivers.
Garbage replaces garbage. A terrific deal.
Exactly.
I love Howard. I go all the way back to when he was on DC-101 in the very early eighties and discovered Robin Quivers, who was his news reader.
While Satellite will reduce his audience dramatically, something far worse will happen: he'll lose his edge. Much of Howard's appeal is that he has been doing his show all these years over the commercial airwaves. This is why his radio show always outshown his private videos and forays into pay-per-view.
Once he is free to say whatever he wants, it won't really matter because no envelope is being pushed.
Result? Boredom.
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