So Long, Diamond Dave

So I have spent the last week in radio hell.

Howard Stern reruns on WXRK ended on Dec. 30, forcing me to suffer through a week of his East Coast replacement, "Diamond" David Lee Roth, while getting ready for work.

People can say what they want about Howard, most of which is patently untrue.  But what is undeniable is that he is an unparalleled communicator and wit.  After 10 years of waking up to his rants and entirely un-PC shenanigans, his decampment for satellite radio left a huge void in my morning routine.

Needless to say, it is a void that Roth, the former Van Halen frontman, is entirely unequipped to fill.

I listened to the new Roth morning show on the renamed 92.3 "Free FM."  As much as I was rooting for the aging rocker, I didn't laugh.  Not once.  All week.  (Roth himself, and the small collection of in-studio flunkies, find every word that falls from the host's lips to be sheer comic genius, however.)

Not only does Roth have diarrhea of the mouth, but he is so afraid of even a millisecond of dead air that he pots up a music bed every time there is so much as a slight lull in the conversation.  As for his entire shtick, it is essentially one baffling non sequitur after another.  (His show's television commercials in the New York area are just as perplexing.)

So how excited was I when my new Sirius S50 radio showed up yesterday, just in time for the Stern show's uncensored Monday premiere?  The timing was even more impeccable than Howard's internal comedic metronome.

Terrestrial radio is a dinosaur whose extinction is being hastened by the meddlesome puritans at the Federal Communications Commission, and I will not be a bit sad when it plunges headlong into the broadcasting tarpits.

Color me ecstatic to be free of "Free FM."

Comments

[Dan]

Too bad Sirius is locked in a death spiral. Paid too much for content and hopelessly behind on the technology curve. Very suprised Karmazin hitched his wagon to this lead balloon.

No worries about Stern tho. Sure XM'll make a home for him after they're finished picking over Sirius's carcass...

[North Dallas Thirty]

Too bad Sirius is locked in a death spiral.

It's the curse I put on media who hires people who seem to congenitally be unable to stop protecting and promoting outing, or insist on claiming there are gay "internment camps" operating.

(dusts lapel modestly)

Seriously, though, satellite radio is the greatest. It WILL be my savior once I move from four-country-music-station Dallas to "Country? What's THAT?" San Francisco.

[mountain queen]

Obviously there is one XM fan here in the comments section.
Don't knock Sirius off the air just yet. There's plenty of room in the sky for others as well. The high ground has always been the choice in war. Now, we have the high ground of satellite television and radio. You may have information I don't, but it seems the number of subscribers to Sirius is skyrocketing. It only takes a million subscribers to pay Mr. Stern. Seems he brought a couple million with him so far and likely more in the future. XM is jealous. As for technology, well, one can buy alot of newer technology when one has more business.
The Stern bubble can't last forever. He could croak tomorrow. Don't get me wrong, I'm no Stern fan and I won't listen to him. But money is piling up right now on that side of the fence. Someone with deep pockets is going to see the light and throw another satellite into orbit. The sky is the limit...or rather...geosynchronous orbit is the limit. Listen...you can hear the sound of competition cracking it's whip.

[Jeff Bennett]

I'm a fan of your site, and a huge fan of Stern's. Robin's prozac-induced laugh brightens my morning. How GREAT was George Dekay this AM on Stern's first show. Thanks for blogging about Sirius. G'bye "old fashioned radio".

XO

Jeff
Co-founder, Gay.com

[Troy]

NO fan of Stern. A seedy character who helped speed up the
sleaze being peddle to middle america.
Sirius has shown its left wing agenda by canning Tony Snow and Fox News.
Looking forward to a nice Chapter 11 notice in the WSJ.

[Dan]

No Chapter 11. I predict a shotgun wedding within the next year or two.

[Malcontent]

As far as I know, Mountain Queen is right. Sirius is taking in subscribers almost as fast as they know what to do with them. Thank God I was able to activate my radio via the Web yesterday, because their phone support has been jammed.

Karmazin did miraculous things with Infinity, so I think it's way too permature to pronounce his business model at Sirius DOA. I don't think there's any way just yet of telling how big an impact Stern will have on the subscriber base, but it got me, didn't it?

I am a huge Howard fan. I disagree with him frequently, and I think when he wades into political waters, he is usually terribly out of his depth. Maybe if I had kids, I would feel differently, but I like his id, and broadcasting is better with him as part of it.

Not to cast aspersions on Troy, but many people I know who had already passed negative judgment on Stern had never really listened to him. I have made many converts just by getting people to listen to him regularly. Even a lot of people who hate him are strangely compelled to listen.

He and his crew had such an incredible energy this morning. It was amazing to hear him. It really did sound like a man who has just been freed from prison. There weren't nearly as many F-words as I would have thought -- it was just conversation the way people talk, and without big chunks missing due to the "dump button."

And yes, gay hero George Takei has been hired as the show's new announcer. What a trip!

[Liam]

I've had Sirius for over a year now, and it's fabulous. I would never go back to terrestrial radio -- I'd miss Left of Center too much.
I say good luck to Howard Stern in his new radio home.

[Dan]

Hey, I'd be thrilled if Sirius pulls it out in the end. Competition is a good thing, the last thing this world needs is another Washington-based monopoly. And Karmazin's a brilliant guy, if anybody can turn things around it's him. But a lot of the bad deals Sirius is locked into were made before he was brought on. Here's hoping he can unwind some of them.

First off, Stern hasn't had the major effect on viewership numbers that Sirius was counting on when they made him that ginormous offer. Second, XM continues to maintain its huge lead in subscriber numbers. They're still roughly double the size of Sirius and that doesn't seem likely to change (especially when you look at in-car sales). Third, XM seems to have an insurmountable technology lead. Sirius made a huge mistake when they decided to outsource all technical development. If you look at all the advanced stuff XM's offering (GPS/traffic solutions, genuinely portable players that aren't DRMed to death, a far more flexible/extensible chipset architecture) it becomes clear that there's just no contest. If it's one thing Karmazin needs to change, it's this. Fourth, there's the car market. While the badge lineup looks roughly equal from both sides, XM was smart to get an actual equity investment from their partners. GM has a vested interest in hawking XM, while Ford/BMW really couldn't give a crap about Sirius. Fifth, my bf works at XM and he's really, really smart about this kind of stuff... ;)

Anyway, think this rant's gotten the monday morning bitchiness out of me. All better now.

[Malcontent]

Well, I agree that competition is always good. I'd hate to see the players essentially shrink to one like with satellite TV.

I gotta be honest, I knew about nearly all of those "advantages" of XM beforehand and still made an educated choice for Sirius. Two big reasons: Stern and NFL. That's pretty much all I needed, and I am hoping that Sirius irons out the other bugs. They're already doing some of it, such as introducing the portable S50, but it would be nice to have portable and live but without the disadvantages of XMToGo.

(Full disclosure: I had dinner on Saturday with a friend who works for Sirius, but I had decided to go with Sirius long before I knew him well.)

[Dan]

Yeah - I was with XM before I was with the current bf. Less of a sportsfan, so what sold me on XM was a) better dance music b) better urban infill coverage.

[Malcontent]

I was somewhat surprised at Sirius's repeater coverage in Manhattan. I thought I would have to have the antenna at least somewhat near a window, but it works everywhere in my apartment.

[mountain queen]

I used to work in radio...degreed in broadcast journalism.
I'm not much of a technical guy. Later sales, management for a short time. There isn't much reason to invest in towers and transmitters when the high ground is in orbit.
If I had an FCC license to steal, I'd be worried as hell.
Where I live there isn't any decent music. Consolidation of stations has one programmer making decisions for lots of stations in smaller markets. It may be the same elsewhere. Alot of these guys aren't on the same wavelength as the audience. They don't know marketing and testing a market. The often make decisions on a gut or on the advice of uberprogrammers. With satellite, a programmer looks around and says "okay, I can make 140 stations all different, whoopee." It's like owning the whole spectrum of broadcast radio. And only the sun can knock you off the air.
The general public doesn't care about technical talk. They want their favorite song. Believe it or not, listernership goes up during commercials...people listen.
It wouldn't surprise me that limited commercial messages will join up with satellite broadcasting in a few years.
And it won't affect the audience any. Maybe 1 or 2 minutes per hour to begin with. Then maybe 4 down the road. It'll happen slowly and it won't be like the 18+ minutes per hour some stations play in the big markets.
There are two types in radio. Radio people and bean counters. Bean counters always win arguments. Like him or hate him, Howard Stern just became an owner...and owners always become bean counters. He has a vested interest now.

[Dan]

That's the funny thing about sattelite radio - the relatively high percentage of people who are actually getting their signal thought a repeater cell (which is effectively just another form of conventional terrestrial radio). Basically if you're in any major urban locale and you don't have a (more or less) direct line of sight to where XM/Sirius has their birds parked, you're probably getting your signal off of some land-based transmitter. It'd be interesting to see what the % of people getting signals off of a sat signal vs. repeater.