You have to respect Howard Stern’s financial acumen.
The New York-based talk show host signed a deal with the Sirius Satellite Network that was to give him $100 million a year for the next five years.
Because of how the deal was structured, he has already turned it into a $600-million jackpot after being on the air for less than two months. In the next four years, because of the amount of stock he has received in the company, the contract could turn into a billion-dollar ride.
Donald Trump, now best known for the words “You’re fired,” once penned a book called the The Art of the Deal. If this is art, Stern is da Vinci. Call his new contract a Mona Lisa.
Illusion of intimacy
If you have never heard Howard Stern, you might be asking how can a radio mouth print more money than the mint?
The radio stage is the human mind. The “host with the most” is the actor who knows how to use his sound to surf the audio waves of the listener’s brain.
The radio actor creates the illusion of intimacy.
You the listener want to believe the radio guy is talking only to you. You feel important.
You are getting a private audience with the pope of radio.
How many radio artists are able to achieve this kind of rapport? Only the elite few. They make it look easy. Gretzky, Orr, Lafleur and Lemieux made puck-handling look easy. But that’s what separates the superstars from the rest.
If achieving radio intimacy was easy, media companies wouldn’t be shelling out megabucks to anybody. The expression “talk is cheap” does not apply to the professional talker who knows how to generate intense loyalty in a mass audience.
Because Stern has so much talent, you really have to wonder what was going through his mind 10 years ago when a young Latina artist named Selena was gunned down in a motel on the gulf coast of Texas.
Was it his business brain that made him play Selena’s music the following day with the sounds of gunfire in the background? Howard gargled, “This music does nothing for me. Alvin and the Chipmunks have more soul.” You have to wonder why days after the murder, when 20,000 fans were viewing the casket, Howard decided to poke fun at the mourners.
Perhaps it was just business that Stern was doing on April 21, 1999. It was one day after the Columbine massacre at the school in Littleton, Colo.
Two young men, armed to the teeth, walked into the school, terrorizing hundreds and eventually killing 12 students and one teacher. The mass murder inspired Stern to speak into his microphone.
“There were some really good-looking girls running out with their hands over their heads. Did those kids (his reference to the killers) try to have sex with the any of the good-looking girls? If I was going to kill some people, I’d take them out with sex.”
Stern will be back on Canadian radio on Monday. The Canadian edition of the Sirius Satellite Network will carry his new show. It will begin to air at the same time that Stephen Harper is sworn in as Canada’s new prime minister. Is there a connection?
You need to know that 40% of the Canadian satellite company carrying the show is owned by the CBC.
How is the public broadcaster going to talk about the “scary” Harper when the CBC is trying to profit from the “art” of Stern?
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