Howard Stern Videos
Besides being a successful radio show host, Howard Stern also had his own TV shows, as far back as 1987. I’ll talk more about these Howard Stern videos below.
The Howard Stern Show at Fox
Howard Stern’s first attempt at a TV show was with a TV station which belonged to the Fox network, called WNYW, in 1987. It was supposed to replace the show that was hosted by Joan Rivers, The Late Show. $400,000 were spent on the filming of five pilots that were one hour long each, but in the end Fox didn’t use their option to carry the show and it was cancelled. A reason for the cancellation was never given.
The Howard Stern Show at WWOR
The second of the Howard Stern videos and the first one to have success was the late night TV show from WWOR, which begun in 1990 and ended in 1992. Stern was approached in 1990 by the WWOR program development vice president, Bob Woodruff, about doing a weekly program. The Howard Stern Show had a budget for salaries and production of around $100,000 per week, out of which 10% was his salary. The show had a slot on Saturday night and from January 1991 it was syndicated beyond New York, giving Stern a chance to be seen outside the local area.
Stern had control over what happened on the show, as reflected by some segments, with names like “Lesbian Dating Game” or “Guess the Jew”. It had good ratings, and when it overlapped with the NBC Saturday Night Live, it surpassed it, doubling their ratings. At 12:30 AM, Howard Stern had a 34.4 share in LA, for his key demographic. Starting from 1991 until the show ended in 1992, he went national, being syndicated to 65 stations, which covered around 70% of the country.
After 69 episodes, WWOR decided to stop the show, as it had bigger expenses than revenues, even though the ratings were high. The last episode of this Howard Stern video was on August 8th, 1992.
Howard Stern
The next episode for the Howard Stern videos adventure was a show with his name on the E! Entertainment Television, which had segments from the radio show, but they were in filmed format. Howard Stern begun in 1994 and it ended in 2005, managing to keep constant rating during all these years.
In 1994, E! started filming the radio shows, with the help of six cameras mounted in the studio. The show got to 1000 episodes in 1999, on January 21st, and to 2000 episodes in 2004, on February 5th.
Howard Stern announced on October 6, 2005, that he just signed a contract with Sirius XM Radio, which will run for 5 years. Since it is a satellite radio service that is subscription based, Stern has total freedom over the content, while in the past he was being limited by FCC regulations. The E! show also ended at the time, and Stern signed with a company called iN Demand Networks, making a new show called Howard Stern on Demand. This new channel was uncensored and the episodes were filmed in high def, at Sirius XM. The last show aired at E! had the staff saying their good byes and what their favorite moments of the show were.
These were the Howard Stern videos released so far, from the initial attempt in 1987, to his latest high definition uncensored channel in 2006.