Stern Tells Times About Sirius Programming Plans

The HOWARD STERN publicity juggernaut is beginning to pick up steam with a profile and interview in today's NEW YORK TIMES. STERN tells the paper that one of his SIRIUS SATELLITE RADIO channels will carry "various free-form spinoffs" of his show, while the other would be populated with other hosts (like BUBBA THE LOVE SPONGE), modeled, STERN says, after the old WMCA-A/NEW YORK "Good Guys" concept.

The article also provides a discussion of how far STERN thinks he'll go in the content area ("I don't know where we're going to go with this thing. It's going to be kind of fun to figure that out with the audience. I'll ask them, 'Do we want to go there or not? Are we going to cross this line or that line?' "). STERN said that he is not being given boundaries for content by SIRIUS but "I have my own personal lines where I won't go. It's funny, the people hear 'satellite,' they hear 'on demand,' they think, 'Oh good, there's going to be a beheading every week.' That's not it at all.

I have my own personal lines where I won't go.

"This wasn't about getting on the air and having the freedom to have sex with a woman, necessarily," STERN told the TIMES. "To talk about human sexuality in a way that's adult, or maybe even really super childish, is my prerogative as a comedian."

As ALL ACCESS was the first to report, STERN's channel, which had previously hosted only a day of farting and had otherwise been silent, crackled to life WEDNESDAY with the addition of "HOWARD 100 NEWS," a news report outlining upcoming shows on the channel and the day's happenings on STERN's terrestrial show. On THURSDAY, regular caller "WENDY THE RETARD" is being heard as she spends 24 hours in a studio (whiling away the morning playing a football video game).

Read the TIMES profile by clicking here.

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