Howard Stern hastily arranged a news conference in New York today after the New York Post published a claim that CBS Radio was filing suit against him. Stern said CBS accused him of reaching a "secret agreement" with his new employer, Sirius Satellite Radio Inc., even though he disclosed it to CBS executives and discussed his intentions to move to Sirius on the air.

Stern also disputed CBS's claim that he caused them financial damages by discussing satellite radio on the air, saying it was a legitimate story about the media and helped lead to high ratings for his show and sold-out advertising time.

Stern and his lawyers indicated that no lawsuit had been filed yet.

CBS declined to make any comment.

[ABC News] 

The frontpage of the Drudge Report shows that Stern says CBS Radio will sue. I can't open the link.

The story probably comes from New York Post's Page Six column who is reporting that CBS/Infinity Chairman Les Moonves is considering a $500 million lawsuit against Stern for breach of contract, due to failing to disclose the specifics of his Sirius contract to his bosses at the time.

"When you mention the name Howard Stern to Les, his face turns red and his rage becomes uncontrollable," said a CBS insider. "And Les has a bunch of Washington, D.C., lawyers who hate Howard almost as much as he does."

Until something is official, we're gonna file this one as a "rumor" for now. 

Self-proclaimed as the Mother of All Film Festivals, The Howard Stern Film Festival will be held in Manhattan on April 27th. According to the press release:

"Forget Sundance and Cannes, The Howard Stern Film Festival is destined to become the most talked about film festival of 2006. And, he's inviting his fans to join in."

The Howard Stern Film Festival will anoint the next great American filmmaker by Howard and his distinguished judges and will be catapulted into stardom on April 28th when Howard's loyal fans will be able to view this and other outrageous selections from the Festival on Howard TV On Demand.

Submissions are due by April 11th and are open now. Entries should be no more than five minutes in length and should demonstrate creative film interpretations of "Howard Stern" related storylines. Festival winners will be awarded an aggregate of $25,000 in cash. Finalists and other notable projects will run exclusively on Howard TV On Demand following the event.

The top three films will be awarded prizes as follows:

• 1st Place ($15,000)
• 2nd Place ($7,500)
• 3rd Place ($2,500)

Looks like an Opie and Anthony pest used resources available to him to bring down the Stern Fan Network message board.

Check out the SFN homepage.

One of the biggest requests from subscribers is the ability to listen to Howard Stern online. This is something that SIRIUS and Howard would like to do, but the barrier to entry is essentially bandwidth/backbone concerns. Citing the huge online event of Yahoo streaming Howard's last day on terrestrial radio - the concern is that the load will be more than expected. "We're not going to do it until we get the technical issues worked out" to ensure the best consumer experience as possible.

SIRIUS would like to do it, intially, with no increase in cost. And if/when they do this, there will be no incremental cost to having to pay Howard as a result.

There's this group called the FamilyMediaGuide (which is actually a division of the Media Data Corporation) who thinks its a great idea to sit there and track the amount of profanity occurences on the new Stern Show on SIRIUS. They even go as far as to dramatically call the system the "Shockulator" - a real bunch of silly geese over there. All in all, it's just an excuse to create press releases and generate awareness over their service.

Anyway, they counted the number of "profanity" occurences from the inaugural January 9th show, to the February 9th show - and discovered that overall occurances increased from 2.23 "bad words" per minute to 3.08 per minute. Isn't that shocking?

If you're really into it, check out the full breakdown of each word here. Otherwise, just move on with your life like the rest of us.

Howard Stern wants retroactive pay and monetary damages for his daughter Emily Stern, who he says abruptly quit the Jewish Theater of New York production of "Kabbalah" because the theater's Web site had posted her unauthorized photo to exploit her father's name.

Yesterday, the theater fired back with a letter from lawyer Ron Kuby, who also happens to co-host a daily WABC terrestrial radio show. Kuby said he's ready to fight a Stern lawsuit against the theater and said Emily was trying to "bully the very theater that gave her the opportunity she so craved."

[FOX News]

Jeff Jarvis' Buzzmachine has a great writeup on his recent visit to Howard 100 News and his experiences with the people and the processes of the channel. Very detailed, very well written and the underlying concept that this is the "New News" is an interesting one. Equating Howard 100 News to John Stewart and the Daily Show is an appropriate comparison - they are a satire of radio news. Yet another way that satellite radio is taking a jab at terrestrial.

The humanizing of news is another facinating point. Snip:

To old news folks, this is counterintuitive, but I believe that the voice of news must become more human to be credibible. We don’t believe that voice now because it is so separate, so staged and packaged. But when we get to know the person, we can decide whether to trust him or her. [...] The news makes plenty of artificial attempts to inject humanity. That’s why newspapers hire columnists: we token humans with opinions. That’s why TV news is overrun with happy talk. But we see through that.

Perfect. 

SIRIUS Canada folks get to finally hear Howard Stern (legally) in Canada since he was cancelled in 2001 from Q107 Toronto. But now as a result the CBC finds themselves in a bit of a PR conondrum. The CBC, who owns a 40-percent stake in SIRIUS Canada, has a lot to lose should they piss off the CRTC - directly or indirectly. So while they own a lot in the business side of things, they need to ensure everyone understand they have little to do from the broadcast side of things.

"It's no secret that Howard Stern's program is not consistent with the kind of programming that you find on our [the CBC's] airways. But Sirius Canada made a business decision that was right for it, a decision that was based on the market's demand," said CBC spokesman Jason MacDonald. "We've expressed concerns about some aspects of the content. But Sirius Canada has in place significant safeguards to make sure that the people who are going to hear Howard Stern are the people that want to hear Howard Stern."

[globeandmail.com]