Stern won more than Rush Limbaugh.

HOWARD STERN BECAME THE MOST USELESS MAN IN THE MEDIA:

Stern has earned more than Rush Limbaugh. More than Hannity, Beck, Imus and Schlessinger combined. No radio talent has ever matched his checkbook.

For a while, he was so ubiquitous in popular culture that an article like this would never have gotten off the ground. First, the premise alone would have been absurd: How can Howard Stern be off topic?! He’s everywhere! And second, journalists were terrified of Stern. If he put his spotlight on you, it was brutal: His incredibly loyal fans would terrorize you in public. Ask Kathie Lee Gifford how much fun it was to be caught in Stern’s crosshairs.

And that’s the secret to his success: More than anything else, it was the bond Stern formed with his audience that made him so special. If he was signing an autograph or making an appearance somewhere, thousands of his fans would gather in the pouring rain—waiting for hours—just to catch a glimpse of their radio god. His book “Private Parts” became the biggest literary success ever published by Simon & Schuster. His audience hung on his every word. The emotional connection between him and his audience was unbreakable.

At least that’s what we thought.

Then something strange happened: Howard Stern became the world’s first celebrity to go behind a paywall.

Sirius has been smart: for satellite radio to succeed, it had to find a way to convince people to pay for something they’re used to getting for free. So if you’re Sirius, what’s the quickest and most effective way to build a paying audience?

Answer: Find the biggest name in talk radio with the most loyal audience (fans so loyal they’ll follow him anywhere) and sign him to an exclusive contract.

And that’s exactly what Sirius did. Stern left terrestrial radio to move to satellite in 2006.

This video was originally presented to his fans as a huge step forward in creative content: Stern was previously restricted by the FCC. Now he’s finally free to do the show he’s always wanted to do – it’s going to be wilder, crazier, and way more explicit! Oh, can you imagine the antics Stern could get up to without any risk of censorship?!

Does the wacky Stern 1.0 still exist today? Between clips of Stern lampooning celebrities on YouTube, Bruce Bower’s damning portrayal of him in City Journal, in January 2020, Before After the Covid lockdowns and Stern’s germophobic behavior since then, that version of the quintessential “shock host” seems long gone. That Stern gave Biden the softest of easy questions in late April is another indicator that the once manic, perpetual man-child is now just another pampered megastar, no doubt terrified of being canceled for the past behavior that made him a household name in the 1980s and ’90s.