For Howard Stern, freedom means more humour
From Mark Egan

NEW YORK—Freedom means different things to different people, but for “shock jock” Howard Stern it means being able to weigh a man’s bowel movement on the radio without government interference. Such is the mix of high principle and potty humour that prompted Stern to leave traditional radio and take his bawdy show to the nascent satellite radio business.
“What is freedom? The freedom to go back to what I was doing, to expose myself, to open myself up and creatively to do anything I want,” Stern told Reuters in an interview. “If it’s weighing a guy’s bowel movement, I can do it. If I want to be gross, I can be gross.”
Stern’s definition of being gross will include people copulating on the radio. “I’ve done that already but I had to bleep it out. That’s the problem,” Stern said, gesticulating wildly as if talking about a basic human right.
When he starts on No. 2 satellite radio broadcaster Sirius on January 9, his audience will be a fraction of what it once was, but he says at least he won’t have the Federal Communications Commission censoring him, fining his station for obscenity and sapping his creativity.
He says that freedom from the FCC — not to mention his $500 million, five-year contract — makes it all worthwhile. Stern has two entire channels on Sirius, which charges subscribers $13 monthly for more than 100 channels. Since the 1980s, Stern has battled the FCC, which regulates indecency on the airwaves. Some say that publicity made him a star, but he insists it just made his show “suck.”
STERN SUCKS
He once said he wished the FCC chairman dead of cancer. Now he says he regrets saying that. Stern’s obsession with flatulence and anal sex has brought record fines; the regulator hit the broadcaster carrying his show with a $495,000 fine in April 2004, taking the total career fines levied due to his show to $2.5 million.
“I’m tired of sucking. I’m operating at 30 percent of what I should be doing,” Stern said. “There is no way the FCC has made this show better ... (because) I can’t do anything. And you talk about freedom, now I have two channels.”
As Stern escapes the FCC, some lawmakers in Washington want to extend FCC control to cable TV and satellite radio, although there is no expectation in the industry of such a move soon.
Even while hyping his exit from traditional radio, Stern invokes high principle. The 51-year old’s Sirius ads speak of “emancipation” and use soundbites from civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr.
But he promises some restraint. For example, bestiality is banned. “That’s something I’m not comfortable with,” Stern said. Warming to the topic, he adds, “I’m not comfortable with somebody killing someone, I don’t want people being hurt.”
Among other shows planned for his two channels are “Meet-the-Shrink,” where “Jeff the Drunk” undergoes therapy, and a parody of the ABC talk show “The View” called “Crack ‘Ho View” where crack-smoking whores discuss the issues of the day. If people are puzzled why Stern chose Sirius with more than 2 million subscribers instead of rival XM satellite radio, which has more than twice that number, that too is about freedom.
“I need autonomy and I need freedom,” he said, claiming XM’s management structure had more checks and balances. “I always liked the underdog. Every radio station I ever went to was a toilet bowl,” Stern said. But if Sirius is a toilet, what about that $500 million?
“I’m not getting $500 million,” Stern said, laughing and refusing to discuss the division of that cash between his salary and production costs. “I would prefer not to say (what I’m getting paid) because when I’m trying to hire a plumber to fix things in my house he’s going to come in and say it’s a million dollars to fix that toilet,” he said, then concedes, “But it is a lot of money.”
As Stern develops his show on Sirius — which boasts other marquee names such as Martha Stewart and a 24-hour Bruce Springsteen channel — more of his shows will be on Comcast cable TV, where viewers can pay to see what they can only hear on the radio.
It’s when Stern talks about his new shows, such as “Tissue Time with Heidi Cortez,” that he is most animated. So how long does the Playboy model’s show last? “How long do you think? It’s a 10-minute show,” Stern said.