Goodbye Howard Stern

Well, today will be the last day of Howard Stern on terrestrial radio. I say “will be” and not “is” because I haven’t listened to the show yet. The show starts at 6am in New York, so right now (almost 8pm in Vancouver) it’s close to over. Yahoo is covering it well though, and as I’m munching on my cereal now I’m watching the last show live, which is pretty cool. Howard is giving an impressive speach to the audience outside the radio station. Today will be the last day of the Stern show live on the radio before he moves to Sirius radio on January 6, where he’ll be I’m sure more outragious, less restricted, and way more funny.

That’d be a nice christmas gift by the way, for me I mean, not just in general 🙂

I first discovered Howard Stern a bit under two years ago while I was working at Premier. I actually thought he was Rush Limbaugh, and figured that I’d have fun listening to someone I could hate (the reason why I occasionally turn to Nancy Grace now). I figured I’d listen to some right wing ranting about how we should nuke the middle east or something, but instead I ended up listening to the entire 3 hour show and thinking “you know, he makes a lot of sense”. So I downloaded the show the next day as well, and while I didn’t completely understand all the references, or know who all the people were and how they all fit together, I thought the next thing.

Over the next almost-two years I continue to think the same things. Sometimes outragious, mostly funny, Howard and Artie and Robin have amused me pretty much every morning for those almost-two years. He is a brilliant interviewer, refusing to bow to the publicists saying “don’t ask this question, don’t ask that question”, a funny man, and has somehow created a feel of family by coming on the radio for the last 20 (or more) years.

Sadly I don’t have that many fellow fans around here…. I think of the people that I’ve talked to about this one is a big fan (from Seattle where he can actually listen to the show on the radio, instead of having to download it), the rest give the same “ugh, Howard <spit> Stern”. It’s really hard to describe why he’s so good on radio…. saying that he got some famous guy to tell the story about how his penis got broken, or how one of the cast members got incrediably (memorably) drunk in Las Vegas doesn’t sound that good, and helps to re-enforce the “strippers and midgets” impression that people already have. Can anyone help me out? Course, strippers and midgets are pretty damn funny 🙂

I’m going to miss the show first thing in the morning for the next month or so, and that’ll make listening to the new Sirius show that much better. It’ll definately be interesting to see what happens.

Anyway, I have to leave the live broadcast to go to work (where I’ll turn it on again of course) which sucks (to leave the Robin interview on Yahoo) but ah well, such is life 🙂