April 11, 2006
LOST KINGDOM:
Trying to Corral Stern's Lost Herd: Only a fraction of the audience followed the shock jock to satellite. Stations wonder where millions of ears went. (Martin Miller, April 11, 2006, LA Times)
Can millions of listeners just disappear?That's a question plaguing Howard Stern and one with vital implications for radio itself in the wake of the shock jock's heralded and hyped switch from free to satellite broadcasting.
The self-proclaimed King of All Media once commanded a national audience of 12 million daily listeners before jumping to satellite in January. But since then, his kingdom has shrunk to a small fraction of that size. Meanwhile, the shock jock's main replacements thus far have failed to hold very much of the former flock.
According to industry analysts, the new Stern math scans something like this: At best, he took between 1 million and 2 million listeners with him, and his replacements, spread across many of the country's major radio markets, are drawing numbers in a similar range.
There's a guy who didn't understand his audience at all. Posted by Orrin Judd at April 11, 2006 3:44 PM
Shelling out $13 a month for a five-hour show four days a week will cause lots of people to pause, espeically those in urban areas where Stern's listeners mostly were, who have access to dozens of other radio channels, along with morning local TV shows.
I've got XM, and while I listen to Howard's bitter rivals Opie & Anthony from time to time, I subscribed three years ago because there's only a limited number of available over-the-air radio stations in West Texas (especially on any trip down to the Big Bend area), and of the services XM has added since then, Major League Baseball is a far more attractive reason to continue subscribing than any morning drive show.
Posted by: John at April 11, 2006 3:55 PMThe article doesn't say what happened to the balance of his listeners.
Porn (on line and hard copy) sales must be up, along with video game rentals. Can Naptha, glue, and aerosol paint be far behind.
Posted by: Bruno at April 11, 2006 3:57 PMI get the whole Baseball season on radio over the computer for $15
Posted by: oj at April 11, 2006 3:58 PMPeople don't like paying for something that was once free. I remember at a prior company the free coffee was changed to 50 cents and the guy doing the coffee supplies said that this slight increase caused volume to drop by more than 50%.
Posted by: AWW at April 11, 2006 4:12 PMoj-
How does that help if you spend time on the road?
Posted by: Tom C., Stamford,Ct. at April 11, 2006 4:17 PMRemember Tom, he doesn't.
Posted by: Dave W at April 11, 2006 4:23 PMI particularly like the idea of Stern's listeners turning to NPR instead. On the other hand, if Susan Stamberg starts trading lesbian stories with every guest, all bets are off.
Posted by: David Cohen at April 11, 2006 4:47 PMYeah, OJ, you get that because the socialists over at MLB put the strong-arm to local radio affiliates to prevent them from webcasting their own broadcasts. This weekend's high-scoring sweep of the Padres in pitcher-heaven Petco Park BY THE ROCKIES?!! would have been even more amusing if I had been able to listen to Jerry Coleman go nuts over it on his main station.
Posted by: Brad S at April 11, 2006 4:47 PMDon't overlook the possibility that they made SD a hitter's park.
Posted by: oj at April 11, 2006 4:52 PMThey didn't bring in the fences that much. I've been to Petco Park; there's not that much room to move fences. Though, if the end result continues to be similar to what the Rockies did over the weekend, the Padres can forget about repeating as NL West Division champs (not that that means anything).
Posted by: Brad S at April 11, 2006 4:55 PMthe article said they don't know where his audience wandered off to.
for $13/month you get a whole lot more than just howard's show.
in-car receivers are available.
oj: i take it your thesis is that his fans were only casually so ?
Posted by: toe at April 11, 2006 5:01 PMOJ,
You are probably right. Having listened to about 30 minutes all told on the radio, and viewed about as much of his awful late night tv show, I merely figured you had to be a few neurons short of a neural net to be a fan.
Some one feel free to enlighten me as to the upside of Stern's audience.
Posted by: Bruno at April 11, 2006 5:03 PMBruno,
The only upside? There's always a small subset of suckers and trash-trollers who are willing to pay for filth and dirt, regardless of where it can be found.
Though you do have to admire the majority who had lights go off in their head about not paying for something you had for nothing previously.
Posted by: Brad S at April 11, 2006 5:06 PMBruno:
There's only one car radio audience that matters--middle aged white men driving to work or sales meetings or whatever in their cars.
Posted by: oj at April 11, 2006 5:23 PMPerhaps Howard's old audience finally grew up.
Posted by: AllenS at April 11, 2006 6:33 PMThe article doesn't say what happened to the balance of his listeners.Uh, no, because the main point of the article is that no one knows what happended to them. Posted by: Annoying Old Guy at April 11, 2006 10:46 PM
I'll do about 20,000-25,000 miles on the road this year, in part because it's a 30 mile drive just to go to the bathroom in some places in West Texas. So the XM/MLB deal works out great for me, especially on late-night drives home if the west coast games are still on. While the NFL's Sirius package would be nice to be able to receive, I'm on the road at best on the Sunday after Thanksgiving and maybe one other time during the football season, so it's a far less attractive option, and football is far more a TV sport than baseball is, anyway.
Posted by: John at April 12, 2006 12:23 AM