Last days of Howard Stern

I play it like the Al Anon slogan — take what I need and leave the rest. Still, it can feel isolating, being female, feminist and a Stern fan. An acquaintance told me in all sincerity that Hell had a place reserved for Howard Stern. This is the same woman who rode in a car with me guffawing to the verge of hyperventilation listening to Stern interview Snoop Dog.

What a godsend when Ira Glass, host of NPR’s “This American Life,” wrote a Howard Stern homage that appeared in the “New York Times” Sunday magazine. No liberal-minded naysayer could argue with the vaunted Glass. I wanted to run down the street, shoving the essay in the face of everyone who ever questioned my love for great radio.

On December 16, with much pomp and circumstance, Stern departs from FM radio, leaving behind any fan not willing or able to pony up for a satellite radio and the $12.95-pre-month subscription. His listeners will drop from 12 million to around 2.2 million, though it’s expected that Sirius subscriptions will jump once Stern is in the house.

Though he won’t appear on Sirius until January 9, Stern is already producing shows on his two Sirius stations, Howard 100 and Howard 101. As Stern told Bradley on “60 Minutes,” these new shows will feature a Howard “sensibility,” not to mention his regular cast of revolving misfits and miscreants. One such evening show, “Tissue Time,” features a female phone sex professional, utilizing her skills to help male listeners “fall asleep.” The other night featured a guest host, frequent Stern show guest, geriatric porn star Blue Iris.

The topic of a sweet old lady performing phone sex for listeners also brings a bandied question to the fore. Many speculate that without an entity such as the FCC to either reign him in or give him a foe to battle, Stern will lose his bite. Stern has pooh-poohed this theory, but there’s also the question whether satellite radio will survive as a whole, seeing as regular radio is free. And his terrestrial days draw to an end, Stern is heard regularly complaining about his fans’ failure to subscribe.

“Saturday Night Live” Weekend Update anchor Tina Fey was a bit more optimistic. Announcing Stern’s move to Sirius in October, Fey read from the teleprompter, “Will listeners pay $13 a month to hear a stripper being hit on the butt with a fish?” Then, looking off camera towards an implied answer, “What’s that? Oh, they will? Okay.”

Helen A.S. Popkin lives in New York and is a regular Stern listener. However, she has never played “It's Just Wrong” or spun “The Wheel of Sex.” She's a regular contributor to MSNBC.com.

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