Listened to Howard Lately?
Written Dec. 6, 2006 by in Satellite with 1 Comment
Funny that Fred Jacobs should mention this today, as I have actually made it an effort to tune into Howard several times over the past few weeks. In one two-week period, I listened on three separate occasions--and on each, I heard essentially the exact same thing: Howard interviews porn star, asks her what she'll do, and gets her to sit on some gigantic vibrating contraption for a few minutes. That's it--same thing, three times. Maybe some guys never get tired of this, but I sure did.
With Howard, as with anything else in radio, there has always been something of a 20/80 rule (actually, more like a 27/73 rule, I think). There was always about a quarter of his audience that were hard-core listeners, and the rest were there for the occasional vicarious thrill. No further proof of this is necessary than to simply look at the box office grosses of his movies--if everyone who listened to Howard's former terrestrial show actually went to see these movies, they would have grossed a zillion. They did OK, but not a zillion.
Now that Howard has moved off to Satellite, the loyal quarter went with him--but the rest stayed behind. And the show has changed because of it--sure, much of the change has been driven by the permissiveness of his new environment, but he sounds increasingly isolated: no longer 'king of all media,' but king of a stagnating kingdom of pornography, surrounded by a moat of rabid fans who may cheer just as loudly, but are no longer representative of the wide swath of middle America Howard used to command. And as such, the show sounds like it has drifted pretty far afield of what it once was. Fred is right--it is all about the environment.
Reader Comments
Your 2¢, in chronological order — add your comment below.
I listened to Howard practically everyday for a decade before he moved to satellite. While I loved his show, I moved on to something else (publicly supported CBC Radio 1) once he was gone from FM.
Howard on Sirius reminds me of the movie King of Comedy where the Robert Deniro character Rupert Pupkin kidnaps Jerry Lewis to perform in his basement, except in this case Howard kidnapped himself (with a big fat ransom) to play eternally in his own basement, away from the mass audience on Sirius.
It's hard to think of any media figure who has marginalized himself to such a degree for money and the supposed freedom of an FCC free environment to live in a gilded cage of his own design.