Howard Stern didn’t re-sign with SiriusXM to do the same old, same old. A career “disruptor”, Stern plans to break new ground again under his new SiriusXM contract. He just announced plans to launch a new platform to be called Howard 360 — at least that’s the working title. Don’t get too excited, fans. Howard 360 doesn’t mean the King of All Media is only going to take five days a year off. That 360 means degrees, as in full circle, as in all Howard all the time. (Remember part of Stern’s bargaining power was his ownership of 30 years worth of his material.)
Stern said the new Howard 360 is a platform “everybody is going to copy.” If history is a guide, that boast has legs. Stern’s success spawned “shock jocks” all over the country — and his influence can now be felt everywhere from podcasts to rock radio to political and sports talk shows. Still every great platform, no matter how innovative, needs a little marketing juice to cut through the din of today’s media cacophony. Ever the showman, Stern knows the equation: he joked that Howard 360 will feature his longtime sidekick Robin Quivers topless.
