[Michael St. Clair]

news

They are playing on WAQX, a day delayed and censored. More stations to come?

[NolanJ]

They're being syndicated for 2 weeks in New York while Howard Stern is off the air.

[Joe McCabe]

Nah, he's back, and they're still on.

Stern is getting dropped by Citadel Broadcasting apparently, and Monday Morning, Beasely Broadcasting is dropping him in Miami.

Tuesday, Jan. 4, 2005
Howard Stern Loses Miami Affiliate

This time it's Beasley Broadcast Group Sports/Talker WQAM/Miami that's cutting loose the Sirius Satellite Radio-bound "King of All Media." Stern will be replaced in morning drive by local host Hank Goldberg, who moves to wakeups from afternoon drive. It's the second time in less than a year that Stern has found himself without a home on the Miami radio dial. He was dropped from WBGG-FM early last year in the wake of the FCC's stepped-up indecency enforcement and was MIA in the market until being picked up by WQAM last August. No word yet on who will replace Goldberg in afternoon drive at the station.

[Michael St. Clair]

Some local markets are scared that Howard's going to take too many listeners to Sirius, so they are getting him off the air now. If they leave him on, they won't be able to stop him from talking about Sirius for the next 12 months.

Using the 24 hour delay, the Syracuse station can remove all of the explicit stuff and the XM references from the O&A show.

I can't think XM would allow O&A to be broadcast OTA if they were actually making money for XM.

[Michael St. Clair]

Here's some recap from relevant discussion on the Stern show today, courtesy of Mark's Friggin Website:

Quote:

After the break Howard took a phone call from a guy up in Syracuse who brought up how Citadel has pulled his show off the air and put on another radio show. Howard said that Fahrid is the guy who is running the company and doing all of this wacky stuff. The caller said he tried to keep an open mind with the Opie and Anthony show but he can't stand it, it's unlistenable. Howard said there's a chance that Citadel will put him back on but he's not sure about that. They still owe him a year's salary for the show because they signed a contract. He thinks that they're trying to get out of paying him that money but they owe it to him no matter what. Howard doesn't care what they do with their radio stations but he still doesn't get what they're doing. He said that there are a ton of stories about satellite radio because of what he's doing. The stories are almost overwhelming. There are stories about all of the things that are going on with his radio show and how crazy things have gotten. This guy Fahrid is doing all kinds of wacky things with his radio show but he really doesn't care. He talked about the story he told about Fahrid yesterday where Fahrid accidentally sent him a million dollar paycheck that he didn't cash. Howard said he went back to Fahrid, when he was working at his company, and told him that they'd made a mistake. Howard said he could have cashed it and not said anything but he let Fahrid off the hook and told him about the mistake.
The phone caller asked Howard if he has listened to any morning radio shows lately. Howard said he has listened to a few because he might be hiring some guys. He said there are a lot of bad shows out there but there are some guys who are pretty good. The caller told Howard that he should send Fahrid a thank-you note because all of this stuff is just proving to people that they should switch over to satellite. Howard thinks that he's going to have the last laugh in all of this. He really doesn't care that Fahrid is taking his show off the air. He's going off the air in a year anyway.

Gary came in and told Howard that Citadel released a statement yesterday and they have a reason for not paying him. He read the statement and Citadel says that they did not expect Howard to do what he's been doing lately by promoting Sirius satellite radio. Howard said they have a delay button they could use to chop out all of the mentions so that's ridiculous. Howard pointed out that Fahrid is trying to be Mel (Karmazin) but he will never even come close to being Mel. Howard said he's really just tickled by all of this stuff that's going on. Artie and Howard were doing their Indian accents as they were goofing on Fahrid again. Howard said that he has no desire to leave the company early even though all of these guys feel so threatened by his move.

A woman from York, Pennsylvania called in and said that the station there is saying that Howard is off for the week because he's been bad. They're dangling the show in front of them for some reason, probably to keep the ratings, and it makes no sense to her. The caller wondered if Citadel even tells Howard what's going on. Howard said they're supposed to tell him whenever there is a change made but they haven't even done that. Howard and the caller spent a couple of minutes discussing everything that's been going on. The woman said she didn't even know if Howard was supposed to still be on or not. The woman said that it's almost like they want their listeners to forget about Howard's show but now they won't. The caller asked Howard to post something on his web site to let them know what's going on with the show. Howard asked Jason to post something, but first find out exactly what's going on because even he doesn't know.

Howard said that he spoke to the head of Viacom and asked if he had a problem with him talking about Sirius. He was apparently told that as long as he's not doing a blatant commercial for the company, it's okay to mention it once in a while. Howard said that Citadel could hit the delay button whenever he mentions the company if they want to keep him from talking about it. The woman said that she really misses the show already. She wonders how many stations Howard has left. Howard wasn't even sure how many he had left. Citadel took him off about 5 stations so that knocked him down a few. The woman was telling Howard how bad the new morning show is out in her area but she enjoys calling in to annoy the host. Howard let her go a short time later and continued to goof on Fahrid for a couple of minutes before taking a commercial break.

[Ronald Epstein]

Opie and Anthony have been ranking on Stern
over the past two days about this.

Very funny listening.

[Chuck Mullen]

Quote:

Stern will be replaced in morning drive by local host Hank Goldberg, who moves to wakeups from afternoon drive.

The dick from ESPN? I know he is Miami based.

[Joe McCabe]

Quote:

Some local markets are scared that Howard's going to take too many listeners to Sirius, so they are getting him off the air now. If they leave him on, they won't be able to stop him from talking about Sirius for the next 12 months.

I don't know about them being "scared". That's to assume that there's no other way for anyone to ever know that he's going to Sirius. It think anyone who pays attention to the news, knows by now that Stern is headed to Sirius.
I think they just aren't interested in him pimping the hell out of Sirius FOR FREE, on their airwaves.

Would ABC let Desperate Housewives promote NBC incessantly?
This is a pretty simple issue to me.
And Stern's a liar for saying that Infinity doesn't care, because I remember reading recently that he was asking to be released from his contract, because Joel Hollander issued a cease and desist order to him, in regards to constantly talking about Sirius.

Quote:

I can't think XM would allow O&A to be broadcast OTA if they were actually making money for XM.

How does that make sense exactly? What better promotion could there be, than running a censored O&A show on FM, and then letting people know that they can get the show uncensored on XM (as I understand the terms of that deal to be)
And for the record, the word is that the subs for the O&A show are 20% higher than XM expected them to be at this point.

Considering that XM EXCEEDED it's projected subscriber numbers at the end of the year,that were made before Stern's signing with Sirius, I'd say that Stern has had little to no impact on XM whatsoever, and that probably has something to do with this...
http://www.usatoday.com/money/2004-12-27-consumer_x.htm

[William Laughner]

Opie and Anthony have been ranking on Stern
over the past two days about this.

The past two days? Doesn't that happen everyday? Ranking on Stern is an O&A staple. I am sure they love whats going on...only because Stern has actually mentioned their names during his show the past two days. All they want is a mention and they get it 2 days in a row...their "Love Me Daddy" syndrome is in full effect now.

The bit that Howard & Artie did on monday morning making fun of Fahrid and lumping Opie & Anthony in with all the other bad morning radio personalities was funnier than anything I have heard on O&A since getting them on XM.

[Chris]

I think it's convenient (but laughable) to use USA Today's "make/break" list as a means to douse anyone After all, while I might not have cared for F9-11, it still sold well and isn't expected to sell big in 05, that's beyond the point.. and we'll wait and see on Atkins or Martha Stewart being losers (I think the merger of KMart and Sears will assist Martha, big time).

It's good that O&A can rail on Howard (then again, I dislike all of the parties involved) but I'm not sure it hurts or helps anyone. Howard being booted from some stations helps his cause in a sense in that it makes clear what's available on satellite. O&A having their show tape delayed and edited (and, after checking, the edits do include the right to remove all references to XM) I'm not sure how that helps XM, necessarily, but it might if people are aware that it's delayed and that an unedited version exists elsewhere *shrug*

Either way, both satellite networks had a very good year. SIRIUS subscription went up 5 fold through the year, to close at 1.1M. XM also grew at good numbers, to close at 2.7 "Active" and .4M "Gimme" (3.1 total, with 400,000 units being under factory free years right now) that's a big + for XM, which had a bad month in their when factory contracts expired that didn't look hot; so they also rallied at the end of the year.