"Shock jock" Howard Stern makes his satellite radio debut

Tuesday, January 10, 2006

The self-proclaimed "King of All Media", "shock jock" Howard Stern made his debut on Sirius Satellite Radio, being introduced by the new official announcer, actor George Takei. yesterday with liberal use of profanity. Stern made the deal last year to jump to Sirius after increasing pressure from the government, due to fallout after the Super Bowl XXXVIII halftime controversy.

Stern said, "I don't compete on terrestrial radio anymore." Satellite radio is not regulated by the United States government as it is a subscriber service.

In his deal with Sirius, Stern gets two channels, "Howard 100" and "Howard 101". The channels launched in October 2005 under the names "Douche 100" and "Douche 101," filled with mostly dead air. However, due to his contract to former employer, Infinity Broadcasting (now CBS Radio), at the time he could not broadcast on them, so he filled up the time with 24-hour marathons of Wack Pack members until his contract expired on New Year's Day. That day, Stern did a commercial free segment on his two stations, playing clips from his days as a child, to working at WTBU (Boston University college radio), WCCC, W4, WWDC, WNBC, and WXRK. Then on January 3 and 5, Stern and his team did live test broadcasts, listeners did call in during the tests, Stern told them that these were test broadcasts and that debut show would be on January 9.

Stern began his career in his family's basement, making tapes of fictional radio programs. He then moved into real broadcasting when he began a show at WTBU, Boston University's college radio station. He then moved on to Hartford's WCCC, followed by WWWW (W4), before landing a job at DC-101, WWDC, there his morning show became a big hit but was fired for criticizing the station. A notable incident happened the day after the crash of Air Florida Flight 90. He called Air Florida asking how much a one-way trip from the Washington National Airport to the 14th Street Bridge would cost. He then moved to New York's WNBC-AM were he had an overnight program (since Don Imus had the morning show). WNBC management attemepted to control Stern but not to much success he was eventually fired before WXRK "K-Rock" picked him up and where history was made from then on.

With the departure of Stern, K-Rock and some other stations have switched to a francished format know as Free FM. CBS Radio also replaced Stern with Van Halen guitarist David Lee Roth on the East Coast, comedic radio personality Adam Corrolla on the West Coast and a lesser-known DJ know as Rover.

Sources

Wikipedia

Wikipedia has more about this subject:

Howard 100

"No Stern Warnings at Sirius" — Red Herring, January 09, 2006
Brad Kava. "STERN"S FIRST BIG SURPRISE: HE"S MARRIED/NO, HE'S NOT" — Mercury News, January 09, 2006
Stephen Williams. "Howard Stern makes his debut on satellite radio" — Newsday, January 09, 2006
Erin Carlson. "Howard Stern Debuts on Satellite Radio" — Associated Press, January 09, 2006
Mark Rahner. "Howard Stern drops the (F) bomb in satellite radio debut" — The Seattle Times, January 09, 2006
"Howard Stern" — Wikipedia, January 09, 2006

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