I guess you have to be from Noo Yawk to really "get" Stern. I caught his show back when I still lurked on the East Coast -- mid 1990's -- and I just never really understood why people thought he was so funny. But then, the whole "personality radio" thing has always been kind of a bust with me. It was the same shit as Sammy and The Bull, Ronnie and Donnie, etc. etc. etc.

Just play music fer Chrissakes.

Stern is a big reason why mainstream radio sucks so bad.

I don't know what the hell the "Jack FM" format is either, but for some reason I think I ought ot be getting royalties...

I am not a Stern fan, so maybe I should just shut up. My impression of his show is based on upon a few listenings, but I am not shocked by how close my impressions coincide with "fan" Ace.

Basically, his whole schtick was "you're so hot" ... "show me your boobs" (repeat several times) followed by "if I wasn't married, I would so do you."

I guess it turned into "show me your boobs" (repeat several times) followed by "I might just do you."

Great radio.

I guess I'm the only one who found the headline to that story hilarious.

You know, an hour ago.

Cheers,
Dave at Garfield Ridge

Oh, and Ace, you're absolutely right about Stern and Sirius-- it'll get boring quick.

Crude humor is only funny when it's disciplined. It needs structure, and better yet, defined boundaries. Thus, when you later cross those boundaries, it's a surprise, and it's funny.

With no boundaries, all you get is porn surfing. It's going to kill what's left of the once brilliant Stern.

Cheers,
Dave at Garfield Ridge

P.S. Speaking of his divorce, I caught Private Parts on HBO a few months back. Man, the last few years have not been kind to that movie. It's still funny in isolation, but knowing now what we know now, the film is simply irrelevant, like something out of a time capsule, back when Stern was funny.

Still, Mary McCormack is sweet-ass hawt, so it's got that going for it.

Who has patience to listen to an annoying loudmouth in the morning?

I gave up on Stern a few years back, for much the same reason as Ace. Plus, it's clear (to me, at least) that he's been stealing bits as much as anyone else.

Now I listen to Opie and Anthony on XM. Just as funny as Stern was in his heyday, and much more down-to-earth. And, they're not afraid to surround themselves with other talented people. Howard was always the only important guy on that stage.

Ace, you nailed it: Stern lost it once he got divorced. Try watching Private Parts again in light of what has happened since; it's no longer funny, it's just vaguely depressing. The dramatic tension that always ran as a subtext to his show (and added so much sharpness to the humor) was that he was a lewd, vulgar bastard on the air, but was basically a fairly decent family man underneath it all. Now that he's divorced, all that leering at girls with fake breasts no longer seems like an act or a put-on at all: you get the sense that he's really gonna go bang 'em after the show.

At his best, back in the day, his fixation on sex and vulgarity played like the verbal expression of the id of every horndog guy (read: every guy)...y'know, what you thought privately, but knew you could never act on. He was so funny because he was the guy who SAID that stuff out loud, but still he didn't act on it.

Now you get the sense that he does. The frisson is gone.

I predict Stern on XM will be a magnificent flop.

Who has patience to listen to an annoying loudmouth in the morning?

My husband. At least I think it's patience he's exhibiting.

I see now that Dave at Garfield Ridge submitted the exact same thoughts I had about Private Parts while I was writing my post up. Yeah, the film seems a bit...I dunno, unfortunate these days.

i used to think stern was funny back in the day. i don't know if it just stopped being funny when i got out of middle school, or i just got tired of the constant bitching about the fcc. i can remember so many times i'd be enjoying the show, then somebody would call in and tell him about something that got bleeped out, and he'd spend the rest of the show whining about how he couldn't take it anymore, and he's gonna quit. that was 8 years ago, and he's still threatening to quit.

re: "Jack FM"

Out in my neck of the woods, there's a station that identifies itself as "Bob FM" and I've heard other names for stations elsewhere. "Bob FM" plays crappy music from the 80s and 90s. Must be some new business model, although I don't see how calling your station Bob or Jack or Wad gets you market share.

Stern's whole identity for the past 100 years has been that of an unappreciated genius who is persecuted by the government. How funny do you think he'll be when he doesn't have that to fall back on?
I think Sirius dropped a boatload of money on someone whose best days are behind him. Still, a small percentage of his audience would do wonders for their subscription base.
He can't bear to have other talented people in his space. Not for long, at least.

Ace and the commenters have pretty much nailed it. Being originally from the East Coast, I used to listen to Stern and generally liked it, but, well, it just hasn't aged well.

I hope he will take the opportunity of jumping to Sirius to reinvent himself, but that's not the way I'd bet.

Jack FM is here in San Diego. It's a no-request format with no DJs and they just play whatever in a random fashion. I think they modeled themselves after an iPod and it must be cheap for them since no DJs. Right after they play Duran Duran you could hear Neil Young. That kind of randomness.

Stern jumped the shark after his divorce--all the reasons cited before me.

The Stern show jumped when he dropped the veneer of the EveryMan and became an inthetank liberal cocksucking shill for the Democratic Party during the last election.

Sucking the untalented schlong of guests such as Micheal Moore, permitting the cackling jackass Robin to throw unsubstantiated digs at Bush at every turn...his "the government is out to get me" b.s. when his lapdog Clinton did NOTHING for his cause for eight fucking years.

fuck him. Yeah, he supported Pataki and Whitman -- but she was a joke and you'd have been clinically insane not to support GP considering the alternatives.

and to hell with that zoloft-dependent stuttering John whose presence on the Tonight Show is the greatest mystery of the decade -- did Leno really think that moron was going to add one additional viewer? really now?

I think Ace is right about the cold-cuts-at-strippers shit. So many of his segments are wacky stunt stuff, which I always considered the weakest part of his show. By far. (Still think he does the best celeb interview in the biz - just ain't enough of it)

Also thought the Jackie thing was bigger than the divorce. Never a funny guy, but his life and cheapness was an constant 'organic' supply of laughs. Losing stuttering John is almost as bad (maybe it is as bad). Artie, to me, still seems like some guest they're just letting sit in - even if his comments are technically funnier thn Jackies.

Ah, i guess this is just a limp rant things used to be better in the old days. But they were, dadgummit.

Stern riffing on the news or laughing at celebrities is really good radio. He's quck and clever with a really sarcastic sense of humor. But, in my opinion, he's always been surrounded by a bunch of no - talents.

Also, the wack pack is pretty funny, too.

Dood, if you ever spell baloney like a fag again...

I've never understood Stern's intense popularity. I was aware of him from magazine articles but never heard him until he started getting syndicated in Los Angeles. The novelty wore thin in well under a year. The occasional apearance of a truly funny joke was far too rare alongside the predictable patter.

Even worse, other hosts who had good shows started imitating Stern. At one time I enjoyed Tom Leykis (I was most leftward inclined then) back when he spent time on meaningful issues. A few years ago he decided he wanted to be Stern and his show became nothing but talking about sex. Specifically, getting sex without longterm attachments. This too got tedious fast. All of the people I know over 25 who listen to Leykis are embittered men who were equally responsible for their wretched marriages. So the core audience is half Leykis' age or self-destructive losers. Not my idea of a fun peer group.

Oh, yea, and I went through a Stern phase, too. I got sick of him.

Boil it down and all Stern is is a nasty prick who exploits retards for monetary gain. It dawned on me one day that what I was laughing at was a jerk with celebrity-power taking advantage of stupid girls and the mentally retarded.

I came to my senses and realized it really wasn't funny. It is sad. But Stern is laughing all the way to the bank while people humiliate themselves at the snap of his fingers.

Wouldn't it ironic if one of Stern's three daughters winds up to be a little mal-adjusted and does a Playboy centerfold? That'd be rich.

I always thought it was funny when he stumped strippers with such braincrunchers as "Who is the current VP of the United States?"

And for the record, I think mainstream radio sucks so bad because of Nickelback and Puddle of Mudd and the like.

For those of you wondering, Jack (and other names) FM is essentially an expanded classic rock format on an automated system. So instead of having a few hundred songs from the 1960s and 1970s along with a few dozen from the 80s and 90s, it also brings in the 80s and 90s stuff that was largely ignored by dinosaur rock stations. So the playlist takes a lot longer before it gets repetitive.

For the most part this just means a larger list of artists from recent decades. It doesn't change much otherwise. The list of, for instance, Jimi Hendrix songs will still be the same half dozen tracks you always hear on the Classic Rock stations. Chanes are very low you'll hear anything that'll make you want to go CD shopping. If you like the track you almost certainly already own it.

I've been listening to Stern for about 15 years now, dating back to his channel 9 days - that's actually more than half my life. Great role model for my adolsecent development. I also must be one of the few devotees of both Stern and Limbaugh.

Last year I stopped listening because I got so utterly sick of his daily Bush bash (that, and the fact that WJFK has one of the weakest signals known to humanity). I started listening again recently as he's the voice that wakes me up in the morning, and he's still so much better than all the annoying Zoo jockeys. But his constant whining about the FCC (merited as it is) and his non-stop Sirius infomercialism aren't exactly spurring me on to pay money to listen to him in the morning.

Though I will be damned if I am going to wake up to Eliot in the Morning. Maybe out of spite I should shell out the bucks to buy XM and listen to Opie and Anthony.

O&A Party Rock!

You know, Robin, I invented blogging. Glenn Reynolds is just ripping me off.

Stern was brilliant and inventive when he was local NYC area only. Like other radio hosts who syndicated nation-wide, he jumped when he started programming for a broader appeal, even if that broader base meant aiming for the lowest common denominator. I will say, however, there’s no one I would rather hear do a celebrity interview. Something interesting always comes out. It’s too bad you can’t predict when those interviews will happen – it’s not worth sitting through the rest waiting for it to happen.

Hoo hoo, Rob-bin.

Paul, give XM a try. You can get a unit for $50. O&A can sound like a locker room at times, but at least it's authentic. Stern's offering is a carefully orchestrated locker-room-themed show.

As an added bonus, when O&A do get political, it's usually pretty conservative.

I have sirius satalite and they have been touting him coming to them all year long. Frankly I'm not really impressed. I find him funny to a point but jeez, it just gets old.

JACK FM is the format found in new attemptedly "hip" stations. It recently failed in NYC. Because PDs like it safe, there are often overlapping stations like this, with the other station format named...wait for it..."Bob".

The reason I dislike it so much is that it's very, very vanilla.

It's of Canadian origin, too.

I find all of this Stern bashing and all of this Stern hatred to be perplexing...he is still the number one rated show in many markets. It's odd, no one seems to claim to listen to him and yet, he is a ratings and revunue jugernaut. I admit it, I listen to the guy give times a week. The sex stuff gets old after a while, but, Artie is funny, the whack pack is hilarious, and Stern is the best interviewer in the business.

I started listening again recently as he's the voice that wakes me up in the morning

Your alarm clock doesn't have a buzzer?

I was never very interested in Stern. Pretty much what I imagine sex with a scat freak would be like: The good parts weren't worth the bad parts and I always felt a unclean after.

I listen to Stern when he is interviewing a celeb or if the staff is badgering each other. Its hit or miss and is probably only 20% of his show now where it was once 80%.

I've never listened to Stern, but from what I've been seeing in this comment thread, it sounds like his main problem is that, basically, he's a has-been. His schtick has been duplicated by pretty much every one of those juvenile drive-time "morning zoo" programs where a couple of announcers banter back and forth, swap dirty jokes, make prank calls, interview hookers, etc. It's really tiresome.

Never liked Stern...but I used to love The Greaseman AKA Johnny "Grease" Manelli" on DC 101...back in the day.

Oh, God, THE GREASEMAN! Say, what is the price of an Air Florida ticket to the 14th Street bridge, anyway?

The Air Florida comment is Stern, though he denies calling the airline and asking an actual employee, he did say it on air.

Greaseman's comment was about MLK Day, saying, "if we kill 4 more, we'll get a whole week off."

His 2nd comment was while listening to a Lauryn Hill song, saying, "no wonder they get dragged behind trucks."

Nothing new here. Stern was always shrill, tedious and monstrously unfunny.

The local Err America station does not run their stuff until they pick up Al Franken at 9 AM. Up until that time, they have a local moonbat who's just as loopy as the deranged Err America crew, but doesn't sound like she's driven by hatred and bigotry like Randi Rhodes or Mike Malloy. Quite frankly, I'd rather listen to her on my morning drive to work than either toilet-mouth morning zoos, or any of that automated Bob crap.

Also, it's a funny thing, but a lot of times on TV and radio, the fact that you're not allowed to curse or say anything too sexual makes your attempts to push the envelope a lot funnier -- it's the sense of getting away with something that adds to the giggles. Without any real restraint, that feeling of "man, how does he get away with that crap?" will be wholly absent.

Back in the old days when Lenny Bruce and George Carlin were pushing the envelope, it actually meant something because there actually was an envelope to push against. But now it's like, ho hum, who cares? Restraint forces creativity.

I decided I didn't think much of Stern before I ever listened to him. I read in the newspaper in the early '90s that he'd wished AIDS on Arsenio Hall. Now, I'm no fan of Arsenio myself, but you just don't go wishing AIDS on another human being. It was then that I decided Howard Stern wasn't worthy of my attention.

I listen everyday, and end up screaming at the radio when he starts in with the left-wing stuff. He seems to be an intelligent dude, I wonder what led him to come to this way of thinking.

howard stern blows

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