Will Howard Stern Make Out--or Get Made Over?

There were no strippers on “The Howard Stern Show” Monday, no lesbian porno stars or alcoholic dwarfs or celebrities being ambushed by a stutterer.

There was just the radio show’s normally id-driven host, talking in a heartfelt way about why he and Alison, his wife of 21 years, had decided to separate.

As Stern devoted the bulk of his program, heard locally weekday mornings on KLSX-FM (97.1), to his real-life marital woes, longtime listeners--who tune in for a drive-time dose of celebrity bashing, race baiting and, most especially, sexual fantasy--had to feel their loyalty was being put to a surreal test.

What had happened to Howard Stern, the archetypal sexually repressed, xenophobic suburban man who makes the commute that much more like a Penthouse version of Books on Tape?

He was talking about his tears. About therapy. About how he and his wife will remain best friends.

For years, Alison Stern had endured being a part of her husband’s radio carnival, sometimes appearing on the air to discuss their sex life, but mostly referred to as the put-upon wife who had to endure Stern’s antics while rearing their three daughters at home. In discussing their separation Monday, Howard Stern said the couple were parting amicably, attributing the dissolution of his marriage to his being a reclusive, somewhat depressed workaholic.

Stern’s vulnerability has always been a key component of his comedy (this is a guy, after all, who loves to volunteer his own sexual ineptitude). But his newfound status as a single guy throws his whole act into question, given that his comedy is based on two competing identities: the arrested adolescent on the air and the “normal” husband and father at home.

To be sure, Stern will find new comedy in the prospect of being available again at 45, no longer retreating to his family in Long Island but to a $6-million condominium on the Upper West Side of New York City. But with his marriage on the rocks, the context of his comedy nevertheless changes--a transformation, at first blush, as jarring as if “Seinfeld” had suddenly become a show about a guy who gets married and settles down to have children.

“He told me once that if he ever left Alison, his mother would take Alison’s side,” Judith Regan, who edited Stern’s two books, “Private Parts” and “Miss America,” said in a 1997 New Yorker profile on the radio star. “He’d also lose his entire persona. He’d no longer be one of us. He’d become one of them. He’d be every other celebrity who says sanctimonious things and acts like a jerk.”

Through countless projects on his way to building a media empire, Stern has exploited the comic tension between his id and his superego, between what he would like to do if given half the chance and the way his moral compass always kicks in. This was the dominant theme of his 1997 film, “Private Parts,” in which Stern’s conscience and libido are at constant loggerheads--with the conscience always winning out.

“Howard Stern’s provocative . . . and socially incorrect act in which he dazzles everybody with his high-wire bad-boy act is counterbalanced by the fact that most people believe he is a stable, dedicated, decent family man,” said Michael Harrison, editor of Talkers Magazine, an industry trade publication. “My fear is his whole persona will change when people realize that maybe it’s not an act.”

On Monday, Stern sought to downplay the notion that he will now date every stripper who passes through his studio. “Obviously, I’m not the type who goes out with bimbos,” he said on the air, referring to the fact that he’d been with the same woman for 25 years.

But weren’t we to believe that he would? And does the foundation, the baseline, of his comedy now change?

“He can make jokes about all of the other women he wants to have sex with because the audience understands [having heard it so often] that he has been faithful to his wife and intends to stay that way,” David Remnick wrote in his 1997 New Yorker profile of Stern.

Some Stern listeners, including comedian David Brenner, a sometimes guest on Stern’s radio show over the years, were wondering Monday if the whole thing was a hoax--for ratings, perhaps. Though Stern’s radio audience has been widely estimated at 17 million, he has yet to find similar acceptance on television, a medium less suited to his fantasy-based brand of comedy. Stern’s late-night TV show, syndicated by CBS’ Eyemark Entertainment, has lost more than 30 stations since debuting in August 1998.

Brenner didn’t think Stern’s act would suffer. “He has a brilliant comedic mind, one of the best in the country. He’s just going to get new targets. And those targets will be size 36D and up.”

Times staff writers Judith Michaelson and Brian Lowry contributed to this article.