Stern on Satellite: A Bruised Flower, Blossoming Anew

Indeed, he is a master at morphing and marketing himself, whether by selling video and audio tapes or airing a 1993 pay-per-view New Year's Eve special that shattered records when 400,000 households signed up. All this is eagerly lapped up by Stern's core audience, 18- to 34-year-old men, who are much prized by advertisers.

The essential joke has always been how far Stern can go without getting smacked down. But he rejects the notion that he is jumping to satellite just to be filthier. Instead, he talks about how Chris Rock is hilarious on HBO specials but would lose his punch if the same programs had to be edited to meet NBC standards. In Stern's view, the move to satellite is less about lesbians and more about liberation to be himself.

Whatever the rationale, this remains the biggest gamble in radio history. Sirius's Greenstein says he'll be overjoyed if 10 percent of the Stern audience follows him to the pay service, but the technology is still unfamiliar to most Americans.

"I think a lot of Stern's fans, especially the diehard fans, will fork over the money," says Adam Jacobson, an editor at the industry paper Radio & Records. "If anything, they're going to abandon the medium that refused to stick up for the self-proclaimed King of All Media. But I have friends who listen to Howard Stern who've said, 'I don't know if I want to spend all that money.' Sirius is putting all its eggs in one basket."

But Michael Harrison, editor and publisher of the magazine Talkers, says Stern "is to satellite radio what Milton Berle was to television, the big star who becomes a focal point for a new medium." Harrison scoffs at Stern's bawdy reputation, saying that in the Internet age he "is way down at the mild end of the spectrum in terms of pushing the envelope on sexuality. He just happens to do it on the radio, which is regulated by the government."

The new Sirius channels will feature one program in which Jeff the Drunk, one of Stern's Wack Pack regulars, receives therapy; another with Stern's parents; a session with a phone-sex practitioner called "Tissue Time"; and a show with Bubba the Love Sponge, who was also fired by Clear Channel. There is a "Howard 100 News" operation that features mainly reporting and interviews with the show's regular guests and hangers-on.

The news team, Stern insists, is composed of "real journalists. The first thing I said to them was, 'You have full autonomy. If I do something wrong and you want to investigate it, you go after it.' Boy, am I sorry I said that. They've been chasing me down on everything."

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A longtime Stern lament is that he has never gotten his due even as he spawned a legion of imitators.

"The media probably doesn't understand me," says Stern. "The show hasn't been given credit. I'm seeing glowing praise of Oprah Winfrey. Oprah Winfrey took the Phil Donahue show and cloned it; that's her contribution. Do I sound bitter? Perhaps. Because what my show did was create a revolution. Go back and listen to what radio sounded like when I came on the scene. You didn't have a Rush Limbaugh type. The host didn't give his view. . . .

"Somehow the media have gotten it in their head that I should appeal to everyone. You read an article by someone who clearly doesn't listen to me, and they'll go, 'Well, there's many people who are outraged and don't like him.' Now what performer do you know in the history of this country who appealed to everyone? Johnny Carson? My mother hated Johnny Carson."

For two decades, Stern blabbed about his wife, Alison, and the joke was that although he was tempted by the semi-clothed starlets who paraded through his studio, he had to remain faithful. After their 2001 divorce, he began dating model Beth Ostrosky.

The change in Stern's personal life may have accomplished what the legal firepower of the FCC could not. Although he still spills his guts on the air, there is greater restraint on matters close to home.

"There's a personal line you can't cross," says Stern, who once joked on the air about his wife's miscarriage. "I've always fought with that in my own mind. After my divorce, I didn't think it was fair to my ex-wife to talk about certain things. My kids, I've always kept a lot off the air. I practically have no life as it is. I've destroyed many a relationship. I don't have any friends."

As for Ostrosky, "I've got a great relationship with my girlfriend. I don't want to [mess] it up by working too many hours. There are days when I come home and she goes, 'Eww, wow, why did you talk about that?' And I go, 'I'm Howard Stern, man, it comes out.' "

Stern, who first talked to XM five years ago, insists he would have quit radio had the satellite option not emerged. "I hated going to work for the last 10 years," he says. Stern says he simply would have pursued his other ventures, which now include a cartoon series based on his high school years and a movie remake of "Porky's."

He now describes himself as a "content provider" who is "going to make radio deals for people like Hollywood makes for film and television." He can wax as enthusiastically about Sirius's gay channel, Springsteen channel and Martha Stewart channel as about his own.

His show, ultimately, is about honesty -- sometimes cringe-inducing honesty -- and he is the same way in interviews, where he cops to a heavy schedule of psychotherapy.

"I think I sometimes come across as very arrogant," Stern admits. "Although, God, there isn't a more neurotic guy on the radio than me, a guy who wakes up in the morning and wants to vomit. The arrogance comes from a tremendous insecurity. I'm the guy who can't bear to have anyone not come with us to satellite. You know, How can you leave me ? How can everyone in the world not be listening to me? I have this delusion."