Just a quick bit of Howard talking about the Stiletto. Takes a couple shots at terrestrial radio as well. A good listen.

A recent article in AdAge highlights the fact that Howard Stern's ad rates have dropped to $5,000 - $6,000 per spot - with live reads maxing out at $10,000. That's about 1/2 of what Sirius was originally asking, and back in his terrestrial days Stern was commanding a live-read upwards of around $30,000.

But that's not really the interesting part of the article, because well it's not really much of a surprise. The interesting part is the listener number data coming from Sirius.

While XM does offer some audience data from a custom Arbitron report, Scott Greenstein, president-entertainment and sports at Sirius, said Sirius has hired a third-party research company to get audience data on "certain things our advertisers would need." The third-party data, culled from the unnamed research company, shows that 58% of subscribers listen to Howard Stern during the week.

That means there's about 5 million Stern listeners according to this data. Take 4.7 million Sirius subscribers multiplied by an estimated 2 listeners per subscription, equals 9.4 million total Sirius listeners. Multiplied by 58% and you've got Stern's audience of about 5 million people.

"Given the state of terrestrial, there are a lot of shows and hosts that would like to have that [many listeners]," Mr. Greenstein said.

[AdAge]

Howard Stern's former sidekick, Jackie "The Joke Man" Martling, is rumored to be getting his own show on SIRIUS Satellite Radio.

Insiders say Stern will announce on his show next week that Martling will have his own program on Sirius, which "will debut mid-October," says a New York Daily News source.

Martling said through his rep he has "no news" about a new radio show just yet. If this were to be true, it would be a great move in my opinion. Jackie rules. 

[New York Daily News via Wizbang Pop]

John Mainelli, the New York Post reporter who helped spread the rumor (twice) that Howard Stern is returning to terrestrial radio, has left the paper after receiving an ultimatum from editor in chief Col Allan.

Mainelli was told that he had to choose between his freelance job covering the radio industry for the Post and his consulting for terrestrial radio stations and owners. Something that was not disclosed in his articles, magnifying a possible conflict of interest.

Though Mainelli was pretty much regurgitating a report from Inside Radio, he did spice up his story a bit saying that Stern was having trouble booking celebrity guests (something that Gary quickly squashed).

Howard 100 News called attention to Mainelli's terrestrial radio consulting ties on air, which was quickly picked up by Jeff Jarvis' Buzzmachine.com. The information then made its way to the New York Post's Editor in Chief.

"I'm very disappointed, and I'm really pissed at Howard Stern," Mainelli said. "From now on, anything I write about him will have to have a disclaimer: John Mainelli has an ax to grind against this man."

[Radar Online] 

UPDATE: Listen to the Howard 100 News report below:

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An article by the New York Post's John Mainelli set off Howard this morning on his show. Citing Inside Radio's claim (which incidently Orbitcast cited as well) that Sirius CEO Mel Karmazin was in talks with Citadel's CEO Farid Suleman, John Mainelli expanded on the rumor hinting that WPLJ or WABC were possible outlets.

Howard Stern explicitely stated on his show that he has absolutely no intentions of returning to terrestrial radio. He's quite happy on satellite radio.

You all called bravo-sierra on this one, and obviously were right (did anyone believe this rumor?) but just in case there was any doubt... there should be no more.

[New York Post] 

Side Note: A post on SeekingAlpha seems to think that a good way for Stern to boost his popularity, and Sirius subscribers, is by... uhm, podcasting. Pure genius.

At least that's according to radio industry publication Inside Radio. Apparently there is word that a "mega-deal" is brewing between Sirius CEO Mel Karmazin, Howard Stern, and Chairman & CEO of Citadel Broadcasting Farid Suleman. Links to Inside Radio tend to have a short lifespan, so here's a snippet for your reading pleasure:

What’s with all the speculation about Howard Stern back on “the radio”?

The gossip continues to be that some sort of mega-deal’s brewing among Sirius chief Mel Karmazin, Stern, and Mel’s longtime associate Farid Suleman — who’s running Citadel and about to take over the ABC properties.

No other details are available regarding this, but Audio Graphics is thinking that Stern is destined to return to terrestrial airwaves.

[Inside Radio]

UPDATE: And yes, and the 60 Minutes profile of Stern last night was a rerun.

Howard responded yesterday against the claim that his popularity is waning, based on traffic to Stern's website, stating that "I've got more enemies now than I ever have. We are so successful here at Sirius Satellite Radio. I have the entire radio industry fucking with me, hiring publicists to plant whatever shit they can say in the paper to make it seem like we're losers.

"My enemies are way worse than the government. Big business is my enemy, business people desperate for money. And let me tell you, they are way worse than the government," Stern continued.

Now while I find the comparison to website traffic to one's celebrity status a bit... useless. I also have to openly disagree that this would be a conspiracy of some sort put together by terrestrial radio. The publishing of the Hitwise numbers was simply a bait for media attention, in my opinion, and it is obviously working. But a smear campaign?

Stern later promised to release numbers contrary to the report by Tancer that will show traffic on his website has not dropped since joining Sirius.

[via FMQB] 

Artie Lange's Beer League debuts today in a limited opening (160+ theaters) and word has it the nationwide opening is set for October 6th. Check here for a list of theaters premiering the movie today.

Staring Artie Langue (of course), as well as Ralph Maccio, Anthony De Sando, Cara Buono, Jimmy Palumbo, Joe Lo Truglio , Jerry Minor, Seymour Cassel, Michael Deeg, and Laurie Metcalf.

Variety has an interesting review on the movie if you want to check it out, or watch the trailer after the jump...

With Howard Stern's move from terrestrial to satellite radio, and his show gone from E! to OnDemand, visits to Stern's website and search queries are down - at least according to Hitwise (via Media Buyer Planner). This sparked my curiousity, because some people are using this data to say that his move to satellite hurt his celebrity.

So first, let's work backwards and take a look at search queries data. First, the Hitwise numbers:

Now, let's contrast these numbers with what Google Trends shows us:

Strange, the trend lines don't seem to match up... even if you just look at the same date ranges (Hitwise starts from March 2005 - right around the "D" mark on Google Trends).

OK, so let's look at overall website traffic:
 

Now, aside from the "siriusradio.com" thing - which redirects to sirius.com anyway - I wanted to see how this matches up with Alexa traffic results:

(Note that I'm only able to overlay sirius.com and howardstern.com on the Alexa chart.) These tend to be tracking with each other, as opposed to opposite each other as the Hitwise numbers seem to be.

Now wait, didn't comScore do something like this earlier this year? Oh yeah, that's right, they did. Let's take a look at their numbers as well:

Interesting.

Now... really all this proves is that each service's varying methodology has the ability to create different results. Interesting to say the least, but not nearly the law-of-the-land.

So that leads me back to the question of using this to measure the amount of celebrity. Does the decline in traffic and search queries (according to Hitwise) indicate a reduction in the 'celebrity' of Howard Stern?

Well... yes actually. He's talking to a lot less people now, so what? The thing I really don't like about both posts is that they are indicating that being on satellite radio is a step down in "status." But this form of media is still very much in it's infancy, yet the rate of adoption is faster than cell phones, cable and the Internet. Sure, right now the audience is relatively small... but what about in 2010?

Listening to Howard this morning was an eerie and solemn tribute to the 5-year anniversary of the September 11th attacks. At 8:58am this morning, Howard replayed the original 9/11 show from that day.

I say it was eerie because I was listening to Stern on that morning half a decade ago. I can recall exactly where I was at each moment of that show and it brought me back to every minute. There was a lot of anger, confusion and yes a bit of levity in between (because no one knew exactly what was going on yet) - it was real.

From the second that the towers were hit, until we arrived at our office less than 2 miles away, I was glued to my radio listening to Howard. Hearing him again today was an incredible reminder of how the feeling was on that day. It's important to relive it and experience that feeling... because we should never forget.

Thanks Howard.