Ringing In the New Year With ‘Miss Howard Stern’ : Television: For $39.95, you can tune in his ‘New Year’s Eve Pageant,’ an event that will allow him to do anything he wants in the private sanctum of pay-per-view.

Just what you wanted, another Howard Stern article.

Second thought, you do want another Howard Stern article, don’t you? Howard Stern, Howard Stern, Howard Stern! That megalomaniacal radio humorist, TV host, best-selling author, would-be matinee idol and tressed-to-kill bad boy. You just can’t get enough of the guy.

Now, to ring out one twisted year and ring in another, who better for ringmaster than your auld acquaintance Howard?

So grab $39.95 (suggested price) and order “The Miss Howard Stern New Year’s Eve Pageant,” available as a pay-per-view event on most cable systems.

Hey, that’s pay-per-view. Get it? Howard, the scourge of the FCC for his rudeness and crudeness on the public airwaves, can do anything he wants in the private sanctum of pay-per-view. Consider the possibilities.

Now are you ready to shell out that 40 bucks?

Stern’s two-hour gala, presented live at 8 p.m. Friday (and rebroadcast three hours later), should be a beaut of a beauty pageant combined with a New Year’s Eve party from Guy Lombardo’s nightmares. All in all, it should be something not just to watch and enjoy, but to witness and then babble on about to anyone unfortunate enough to be within your reach.

So what will happen from Symphony Hall in Newark, N.J.? With Stern, whose art typically is a work-in-regress, it’s hard to predict.

But John Lollos, “Miss Howard” executive producer, is willing to try.

“We’re doing this as a 100%, bona fide pageant,” he says--”the sets, the live orchestra, the dance numbers, the 45 contenders from across the country.”

“It will be exactly the way Miss America is produced, but with one big difference: Our show is a satirical, comic pageant. A flat-out sendup of an American institution from beginning to end.”

To get a hint of just how outrageous the night might be, consider Stern’s panel of judges, scheduled to include Tiny Tim, Joe Frazier, a Ku Klux Klansman, a man without arms or legs and that husband on the cutting edge, John Wayne Bobbitt.

Look for these and others from Stern’s foundling home for the dross of celebrity, along with tacky sketches and tasteless gags guaranteeing that the last thing to offend you in 1993, and the first to gross you out in 1994, will be discourtesy of Howard Stern.

That’s entertainment!

“It’s all about comedy,” Lollos insists. “Howard is very skilled at knowing how far he has to go to be fresh and funny, and then not go any further.”

Well, maybe.

“Lewd alone is not funny,” Lollos presses on. “Sometimes I think people focus on the lewd instead of the joke, which is the point of it all.”

“People aren’t going to stand around the water cooler next Monday talking about the wacky things Dick Clark did,” reasons Cathy Duva, referring to one of Stern’s rival New Year’s Eve TV hosts.

Duva is director of marketing for METV, which is producing Stern’s show. She says it’s sure to beat the current champ among entertainment PPV events: a March, 1990, New Kids on the Block concert, which had sales of about 270,000 households.

“How much further than that Howard will go is anybody’s guess,” she says.