Howard Issues Some Stern Warnings to His Competition

Having starred in a major motion picture, written two best-selling books and presided over a wildly successful morning radio program, the self-proclaimed King of All Media sets out tonight to conquer a new entertainment venue: late-night television.

It’s an arena in which Howard Stern has done battle before, with mediocre results. This time, befitting the surge in popularity he has enjoyed in the years since that effort, he arrives with the backing of no less a media giant than CBS.

He’s not on the network--yet--but the TV series, called “The Howard Stern Radio Show,” is syndicated by Eyemark Entertainment, a division of CBS, and will be seen at 11:30 p.m. on 12 of the 14 CBS-owned stations, including KCBS-TV Channel 2 in Los Angeles. It’s also airing on 58 other stations around the country.

“The Howard Stern Radio Show” will be similar in nature to Stern’s weeknight show on E! Entertainment, which puts cameras in the studio of his popular radio program and packages the best of the footage in half-hour installments. The Saturday night CBS program will have first dibs on material from the radio show but will be supplemented, according to Stern, with animation and a few specially produced bits.

In an uncharacteristically sedate on-air telephone press conference with reporters from around the country Tuesday morning, Stern said that he didn’t have to do much different to shake up the Saturday late-night scene.

“The radio show is really a television show in a sense,” said Stern. “We are running around the studio. We have guests. It’s not unlike ‘The Tonight Show.’

“When I watch ‘Saturday Night Live,’ there is nothing to turn over to,” he said. “We get people in here and do the real thing. We don’t have a lesbian sketch. We bring lesbians in. It’s reality programming, not sketches.”

Stern believes “The Howard Stern Radio Show” will have no problem beating “Saturday Night Live,” which he claims is a tired show. “It’s not that ‘Saturday Night Live’ is horrible. It’s that nothing else is on,” he said, although the producers of Fox’s “Mad TV” would argue otherwise. “I can’t imagine that our show wouldn’t beat ‘Saturday Night Live,’ but you just can’t tell.”

Advertisers May Shy Away, Observers Say

Some industry watchers are not so sure that Stern will triumph on Saturday nights, or that his ratings matter in any case.

“I think his biggest problem is getting advertisers comfortable with his format,” said Tom De Cabia, senior vice president of the Paul Schulman Co., a media buying agency. “A lot of advertisers will steer away. They don’t need letters from pressure groups. He is talented and funny and will be delivering a big audience, but I’m not sure the big advertisers needed on network television will go for it.”

Still, on a commercial break during the on-air press conference, Stern himself did ads for Dunkin’ Donuts and Toyota.

“I hear the show is sold out,” said Stern. “I could care less. The day I start caring about that is the day the show sucks.”

It has been reported that “Saturday Night Live” creator Lorne Michaels, who would not comment for this story, is unafraid of the Stern competition. “SNL” is apparently going to change format slightly for the coming year, doing shorter skits and more taped pieces.

E! Vice President of Programming John Rieber said that he is unconcerned about the Saturday night show, claiming that it will only serve to enhance the profile of his network’s Stern show.

“He will continue to grow on E! regardless of what happens on CBS,” said Rieber. “Will there be some material that you will see on both? Of course. We will just do the most compelling half-hour regardless of how it is used by them.”

Rieber said that the Stern show is his network’s most highly rated program on a regular basis, but those viewers clearly pale in number to those who listen to Stern’s radio show. He has been the top-rated English-language morning program in the Los Angeles-Orange County market for nearly two years.

“His audience is primarily a radio audience. I think there is nothing necessarily visual about his show,” said Todd Boyd, professor of critical studies at the University of Southern California’s School of Cinema-Television. “I think that Stern may be past his prime. He has a strong, loyal radio following. If you live in an urban area and drive a car, you are in a situation that you want something like that close to you. But I don’t think it translated well in his film [“Private Parts”], and it certainly isn’t compelling television.

“On the other hand, CBS has been in the tank for a while, so you’re not talking about any risk,” Boyd said. “And it certainly is easier to take that risk in the late-night time slot.”

Stern decried the notion that he is merely a creation of radio.

“When I did film, that was a whole different medium,” he said. “I’ve written two books. I’ve done television in a different format. I’ve done pay-per-view. I’ve done music albums. What is left, fire chief?

“I don’t have time to do a network television show, a completely separate show from my radio show,” he said.

From 1992 until 1994, Stern did a syndicated show out of the WWOR superstation. That show was entirely separate from the radio program, with bits like “Lesbian Dating Game” and oddball guests who did things like blowing smoke out of their stomachs. It often beat “Saturday Night Live” in New York and Philadelphia, its two most popular markets. But Stern claimed WWOR executives censored his material too often, and those executives countered that Stern was too difficult to work with and too controversial for most advertisers, so the show died.

Stern credits CBS President Mel Karmazin, who fostered Stern’s radio growth through the Infinity Broadcasting stations he sold to CBS in 1997, with getting “The Howard Stern Radio Show” started.

“That’s the only reason this show is on: a man named Mel Karmazin,” Stern said. “He always believed in me.”

Karmazin and the CBS owned-and-operated stations are said to be hoping that the Stern program will help attract the adult male viewers that CBS wants for its prime-time schedule and its new contract with the National Football League.

CBS and Stern appear unfazed by protests from groups such as the Tupelo, Miss.-based American Family Assn., which calls his show “cultural pollution,” and New York-based Morality in Media, which calls CBS’ decision to put Stern on television “a slap in the face of the large majority of Americans who are already fed up with the glut of vulgar sex talk, cursing, profanity and incivility on broadcast TV.”

“I am not concerned at all,” Stern said. “My show on the radio doesn’t really attract any children. We have an 18-plus male audience, with a primary focus to 25- to 54-year olds.” He then added one of his trademark riffs: “But I would not have my kids watch anything I do. Anybody else’s kids, it’s fine for.”

* “The Howard Stern Radio Show” premieres at 11:30 tonight on KCBS-TV Channel 2.