SHIT DISTURBER / AGE: 52
Digital Journal — Dear Howard: What’s your secret? How do you package crack whores, fart jokes and lesbian foreplay into 30 minutes of radio? Even more impressive is how you keep it flowing in the face of a $500 million (US) lawsuit launched by CBS president Leslie Moonves. He said you unfairly promoted your new employer, Sirius Satellite Radio, during your last month on terrestrial radio. Looks like this is just another fly to swat, since you called the CBS prez “vindictive, vicious and jealous” during your “I Hate Les Moonves Tour.”
Legal troubles aside, you’re also pissed the Stern faithful haven’t followed you to satellite. You told Entertainment Weekly: “I want to say to my audience in this article, ‘Fuck you! You haven’t come with me yet? How dare you?’” That’s the Howard we know — quick to insult anyone, even his fans, who dares ignore His Jockship.
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But you can’t be that upset. You’re raking in $500 million (US) over five years at Sirius. More than four million subscribers are tuning in. It’s all you all the time, especially with Howard TV, a new cable channel available in 20 million homes. And let’s not forget — you’re dating a model, Beth Ostrosky, 19 years your junior.
Any red-blooded guy would love to have your job. Who else spends his nine-to-five interviewing strippers and Andrew Dice Clay? You verbally abuse your ex-boss as if the whole world wasn’t listening. You could — and do — blather about your bowel movements and the phone lines would still light up.
Twenty years in the radio business and you still manage to shock and awe. You’ve got an incredible streak going, considering how we’re so desensitized to phone sex and dirty one-liners. It takes a certain genius to sell smut wrapped in a new coating, even if you recycle the same bits week after week. The content doesn’t make you popular, Howard. Your attitude, your wit, your no-bullshit chutzpah — that’s why they pay you the big bucks.
And that’s why you’re not disappearing from the public eye anytime soon.
NOT-SO-HOLY HOWARD
- The King of All Media added “talent scout” to his resume recently, when he announced the first Howard Stern Film Festival. The top film earned $35,000 (US) and aired on Howard TV
- Stern recently stated he didn’t regret wishing cancer on an afflicted FCC official
- He admitted to getting plastic surgery on his nose after his film Private Parts
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