Howard Stern Still Seeking a Joke Man
Stand-up comedians need radio exposure, particularly the kind offered by “The Howard Stern Radio Show.” In addition to Stern’s sizable reach (at least 8.5 million listeners over the course of a week, according to the radio industry publication Talkers magazine), there is also the stamp of approval from Stern, who has the kind of clout to make an endorsement meaningful. Ask touring comics about promotion, and chances are they’ve been on endless local “morning zoo” shows, doing two minutes of material to tease that weekend’s club dates.
Unlike television, there are fewer opportunities to reach chunks of the country at once. Comics go on “The Bob and Tom Show,” the morning-drive show syndicated out of Indianapolis, to reach Middle America. But it doesn’t beat exposure on “Stern.”
So when Jackie “The Joke Man” Martling, Stern’s resident comic and joke writer, left the show in a contract dispute in March, comics and managers smelled an opportunity. Though the show--heard locally on KLSX-FM (97.1) and syndicated by Viacom-owned Infinity Broadcasting Corp.--hasn’t presented their appearances as such, numerous comics seem to be auditioning for Martling’s role.
Stern indicated on the air this week that Martling wouldn’t be back. In his place, the young, anointed ones have included comedians Doug Stanhope, Craig Gass, Greg Fitzsimmons and Jeffrey Ross.
“Howard now has the opportunity to cast out to see what other elements may work on the show,” said Don Buchwald, Stern’s longtime agent. “We’ve culled a list of people, some comics, some writers, some voice people who have been participating on the show.”
They aren’t exactly household names, but neither was Martling when Stern enlisted his services in 1983, shortly before the radio personality’s move from Washington, D.C., to New York and gradual ascension to “King of All Media”-hood. Martling was along for the ride, part of Stern’s comedy circus, an encyclopedic teller of off-color jokes and plugger of stand-up dates at places like Governor’s comedy club on Long Island.
What fewer listeners realized was that Martling was also writing material for Stern--one-liners he would hastily print on a piece of paper with a Sharpie pen. Martling says he would then put the paper under a camera lens so that the gags and messages would appear on Stern’s monitor. Sometimes Stern ignored the jokes, sometimes he used them--the point was to get them up there, to feed the Stern maw. “Flying gag writer” is what Martling called himself.
“As far as I know, I invented it, not that there’s any great invention to it,” Martling said. “. . . I don’t remember ever seeing pictures of Bob Hope talking on radio and someone handing him notes as he went along. He was reading from a script.”
Martling, 53, got on the phone with the media this week to promote his appearance on “Son of the Beach,” the “Baywatch” parody on cable’s FX network. It’s a low-rated series, but it has Stern’s name on it (he’s executive producer), and Stern has made ample use of his airwaves to talk about how fantastic the show is. Stern’s radio show, in fact, has increasingly become less a show than a PR platform for his TV production arm, whether it’s “Son of the Beach” or his late-night shows on CBS and E! Entertainment Television or an animated series, “Doomsday,” that has been in the development ether at UPN for several years.
Martling, for his part, seemed to be yearning for a return to his former radio family. “Everybody keeps e-mailing me and saying, ‘Why don’t you compromise?’ ” he said.
Martling declined to discuss financial specifics, although it is believed the sides were at odds over six-figure proposals. “We were ready to keep negotiating. . . . But what do you do? What card do I have to play? I have one card, and that’s [to] stay home.”
Martling isn’t just staying home--he’s still on the road and pushing his latest CD, “F. Jackie” (“I just did a show at Trump Marina [in Atlantic City]. It wasn’t advertised on the Stern show, and we sold out 1,600 seats,” Martling boasted.
Becoming part of Stern’s world is not a position gained easily. Like Martling, Stanhope, says Judi Brown, his manager, had been sending his material to the show for a year and a half before Stern began playing a suicide bit from Stanhope’s CD, “A Little Something to Take the Edge Off.” Stanhope’s Sam Kinison-esque subjects--sex, death and midgets, to name three--evidently helped recommend him. He has sat in during the show twice, an honor that for today’s comic is something akin to Johnny Carson’s coveted “wave-over,” wherein Carson invited certain comics to sit down with him after their “Tonight Show” sets went well.
Doing well on Stern’s show, Brown and others say, doesn’t involve polishing your best six minutes. It involves understanding Stern’s rhythms, the fact that he’s not looking for material so much as a personality with whom he can mesh.
“Howard is amazing to watch work,” said Ron Zimmerman, a comic and writer who has known Stern for more than 20 years and has been a writer-in-residence on the show in recent weeks. To see Stern work, Zimmerman says, is to understand how seamlessly he blends disparate voices and comedic elements. Zimmerman likens it to a bandleader. “Howard is like Duke Ellington. Everybody is an instrument in the orchestra that is ‘The Howard Stern Show.’ ”
Lately, says Zimmerman, who lives in L.A., he and Stern have been informally brainstorming on-air bits via phone calls and e-mails. “We have very similar senses of humor about show business and women,” he said.
Martling’s departure comes at a time when “The Howard Stern Radio Show,” while still powerful, has suffered some ratings defeats. In the media centers of Los Angeles and New York, the show dropped in the winter quarter Arbitron rankings, released Monday, finishing behind AM all-news stations in both cities. In L.A., the show trailed KNX-AM (1070), placing seventh overall among morning-drive shows.
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* “The Howard Stern Radio Show” can be heard weekday mornings on KLSX-FM (97.1) live from 3 to 6 a.m. with a rebroadcast from 6 to 10 a.m.