I haven't been a fan of Howard Stern for that long. I knew about him mostly from his E! show, because of the Tickle Chair (which usually sucks but has occasionally been really fun.) I started checking him out more seriously when he moved to Satellite radio in 2006 and I was able to listen to him online. I quickly discovered that there's nothing else going on, on TV, radio, or the Internet, that's as consistently entertaining and engaging as the Howard Stern Show.
But I've heard some shows from his earlier years, and they're hard to defend.
Not that there's anything wrong with them, in the sense that they did what they were supposed to do and his success speaks for itself. But they are often crass, juvenile and gross. So when people hear me mention Stern and they say they don't like him because he's crass, juvenile and gross, I don't try to argue with them.
The Howard Stern, person and show, that I'm talking about though is a latter-day Stern who has evolved from a shock-jock into a fantastic interviewer and humorist.
Artie Lange, Howard's sidekick, once put it very well when he said "The only person Howard is loyal to is that guy stuck in traffic on the George Washington Bridge on his way to work at seven in the morning." Howard's commitment to keeping his audience entertained for every minute is, in my opinion, unequaled. And that's why he can be entertaining for five straight hours, four days a week, and when he's not on the air, as often as not I'll look for some of his material on YouTube to fill the gap.
He has an amazing ability to figure out what's interesting, and to detect the moment when it becomes boring. And now that he has total control over the structure of his show he's able to move from topic to topic without worrying about commercials, or songs, or any other interruption. He's able to just cut something off cold if he senses that it's getting boring. Or if Robin, who is his barometer of what the audience is probably thinking, indicates that she's getting bored.
Those factors make him a genuinely compelling interviewer. He's able to find what's interesting about people and draw them out about it, while avoiding the typical boring stuff that nobody cares about. Once you've heard Stern do a 45 minute interview with Quentin Tarantino in which he talks about the first night he met Brad Pitt and they smoked hash until 3 in the morning, you'll never be satisfied listening to Leno ask him "Where do you get your ideas? What was it like working with Brad Pitt?" on the Tonight Show ever again.
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He brings a lot of integrity to that notion, too, which is something that's easy to miss. Stories about Stern turning down an A-list guest are fairly common now, because he knows that they're never going to say anything interesting or honest.
They once had Julia Roberts on, because even though she may personally think his show is stupid, he has a huge audience that she'd like to convince to buy tickets to her movie. And it was insanely boring, all she did was avoid questions and refuse to discuss things, and afterwards they were pissed at themselves and said they'd never do anything like that again, take a guest just because of their stature.
In the incredibly unlikely event that some publicist tried to get Tom Cruise onto the Stern show, they'd almost certainly turn him down. Or they'd do the indirect, polite rejection by saying "Look, you know if Tom comes on the show, Howard's going to want to talk about all the wacky Scientology stuff, right?" Which is the same thing as saying no.
That kind of focus really pays off, because when he does get a great guest like Tarantino, or recently Francis Ford Coppola, you know it's going to be a real interview in which you find out something interesting about the person. Howard Stern's interviews often get covered by other news and entertainment shows, because his guests reveal things that they don't or can't talk about anywhere else.
Brad Pitt is still catching shit because Tarantino talked about him smoking hash, a week after he said on some other show that he quit smoking pot when he had kids with Angelina Jolie. And Denise Richards admitted for the first time that she had breast implants on his show. Not that anyone should care about either of those things, but they're both examples of things that were widely reported after coming out on the Howard Stern show.
The other aspect of the show that's consistently fascinating is the way he's able to focus on the bizarrely interesting reality of the behind-the-scenes aspects of the show, but I think I'll address that later, because I've been at this for an hour and even I've gotten bored with the subject. 😎
But I've heard some shows from his earlier years, and they're hard to defend.
Not that there's anything wrong with them, in the sense that they did what they were supposed to do and his success speaks for itself. But they are often crass, juvenile and gross. So when people hear me mention Stern and they say they don't like him because he's crass, juvenile and gross, I don't try to argue with them.
The Howard Stern, person and show, that I'm talking about though is a latter-day Stern who has evolved from a shock-jock into a fantastic interviewer and humorist.
Artie Lange, Howard's sidekick, once put it very well when he said "The only person Howard is loyal to is that guy stuck in traffic on the George Washington Bridge on his way to work at seven in the morning." Howard's commitment to keeping his audience entertained for every minute is, in my opinion, unequaled. And that's why he can be entertaining for five straight hours, four days a week, and when he's not on the air, as often as not I'll look for some of his material on YouTube to fill the gap.
He has an amazing ability to figure out what's interesting, and to detect the moment when it becomes boring. And now that he has total control over the structure of his show he's able to move from topic to topic without worrying about commercials, or songs, or any other interruption. He's able to just cut something off cold if he senses that it's getting boring. Or if Robin, who is his barometer of what the audience is probably thinking, indicates that she's getting bored.
Those factors make him a genuinely compelling interviewer. He's able to find what's interesting about people and draw them out about it, while avoiding the typical boring stuff that nobody cares about. Once you've heard Stern do a 45 minute interview with Quentin Tarantino in which he talks about the first night he met Brad Pitt and they smoked hash until 3 in the morning, you'll never be satisfied listening to Leno ask him "Where do you get your ideas? What was it like working with Brad Pitt?" on the Tonight Show ever again.
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He brings a lot of integrity to that notion, too, which is something that's easy to miss. Stories about Stern turning down an A-list guest are fairly common now, because he knows that they're never going to say anything interesting or honest.
They once had Julia Roberts on, because even though she may personally think his show is stupid, he has a huge audience that she'd like to convince to buy tickets to her movie. And it was insanely boring, all she did was avoid questions and refuse to discuss things, and afterwards they were pissed at themselves and said they'd never do anything like that again, take a guest just because of their stature.
In the incredibly unlikely event that some publicist tried to get Tom Cruise onto the Stern show, they'd almost certainly turn him down. Or they'd do the indirect, polite rejection by saying "Look, you know if Tom comes on the show, Howard's going to want to talk about all the wacky Scientology stuff, right?" Which is the same thing as saying no.
That kind of focus really pays off, because when he does get a great guest like Tarantino, or recently Francis Ford Coppola, you know it's going to be a real interview in which you find out something interesting about the person. Howard Stern's interviews often get covered by other news and entertainment shows, because his guests reveal things that they don't or can't talk about anywhere else.
Brad Pitt is still catching shit because Tarantino talked about him smoking hash, a week after he said on some other show that he quit smoking pot when he had kids with Angelina Jolie. And Denise Richards admitted for the first time that she had breast implants on his show. Not that anyone should care about either of those things, but they're both examples of things that were widely reported after coming out on the Howard Stern show.
The other aspect of the show that's consistently fascinating is the way he's able to focus on the bizarrely interesting reality of the behind-the-scenes aspects of the show, but I think I'll address that later, because I've been at this for an hour and even I've gotten bored with the subject. 😎
