BY ZEITGEISTY

After five years with Sirius Satellite radio, Howard Stern is threatening to quit. Apparently, Sirius is under massive pressure to cut back on costs, and Stern’s $500 million salary is no longer feasible. With less cars being sold due to the flagging economy, a major outlet for Sirius has dried up, forcing them to find ways to stop the bleeding. Since signing Howie in 2004, the company has yet to post a net profit, and in fact has barely avoided bankruptcy. Personally, this comes as no surprise to me. Satellite radio is and always will be a non-starter. To equate it with cable TV was never a cogent comparison. Sure, the idea of uncensored, commercial free radio sounds all well and good on paper, but psychologically people just balk at the idea of actually PAYING for it.

I grew up listening to Howard Stern, from all the way back to when he was on WNBC. What he was doing in those days was truly innovative, and unbelievably hilarious. Of course, it was a completely different time, a social landscape pretty much unrecognizable from what it is today. In those early years, his show was legitimate social commentary. To be sure, there was always a salacious element to his work, but by and large it was never the meat and potatoes of the deal. When he switched to K-Rock, he really found his footing and became a national star. I remember listening to him in the morning before my classes would start, with tears of laughter streaming from my eyes. The thing is, I never found the ribald stuff particularly entertaining – it was his insight into the human condition that was so compelling to me. When he would discuss his personal life with such brutal honesty, or converse with Robin on the news of the day, it was just so real, there was never any of the usual Morning Zoo cheesiness in the delivery. As the years went on, he began to cater his show to the lowest common denominator, and it became more and more about strippers and meatheads. Still, there was always that genuine sagacity, when he would just shoot the breeze with his cohorts about what was going on in their lives, that kept me tuned in.

Now, I know a lot of people who NEVER got Howie’s sense of humor, and as far as I’m concerned they were all for the most part a bunch of humorless turds. Whatever you can say about the guy, in his prime the man was just funny. Wickedly funny! Unfortunately, once he got divorced, his whole gestalt kind of shifted. He was no longer the same character. He went from frustrated husband, angry at the world, to insanely rich superstar dating the ubiquitous blonde. It just became tiresome after awhile. Then when he started in with the Sybian, and the incessant granny porn, I lost interest for good.

In 2004 he switched over to Satellite, and I didn’t follow. The thing is, neither did most of his following. The reasons for this could be many, but I believe the real cause had less to do with the cost and more to do with what he had become. You see, I think the real majority of his following were smart people who had been listening to him for years, and enjoying the same aspects of the show that I’d been enjoying. Straying from that original construct is what I believe knelled the death bell. Sure, when it was free, they’d still keep their dials in the same position, but to actually pay for it was a different story.

Over the recent years, I listened to a few of his Sirius broadcasts and found them uninspiring to say the least. First off, Artie Lange is just funny anti-matter, and second off I really have no interest whatsoever in hearing about his vacations to St. Bart’s or his juvenile obsession with shows like Gossip Girl. This is in no way the same Howard Stern I grew up listening to. It makes perfect sense I know, I mean people change, no one stays the same, but for me the new Howard is a major snooze.

Now he’s threatening to quit, and I think it’s a good idea. In fact, I think he should have quit five years ago, instead of moving over to Satellite which only further allowed him to indulge in the more asinine parts of his show. At least when he was still on terrestrial radio, it provided him with some much needed boundaries. I think these checks and balances were more beneficial to the creative process than constricting, without them the show just became insufferably boring. Worst of all, it was rendered totally irrelevant, which to me is actually a sad thing, for at one time he truly once was “The King Of All Media”.