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                                                                                SHOW BUSINESS, Page 72

Shock Jock


Howard Stern is shaking up radio -- and the FCC -- with his
raunchy, racist, in-your-face talk, but listeners seem to love
it

By RICHARD ZOGLIN - With reporting by Elizabeth L. Bland/New
York and Martha Smilgis/Los Angeles


    It's morning drive time, but there are no traffic reports,
no weather updates, no chirpy deejays whiling away the minutes
between hits of the '60s, '70s and '80s. Instead, the day's
major issues and news events are given thoughtful
consideration. Listen as host Howard Stern offers his usual
running commentary.

    The Navy has decided to reinstate a gay officer, reports
Stern's sidekick, Robin Quivers. Stern responds with a mincing
homosexual imitation, then argues that gays in the military
should have separate quarters to avoid sexual promiscuity. "When
I get nude in front of a gay guy, they get so hot that they
can't control themselves." Russian President Boris Yeltsin has
made another plea for economic aid. "Those stupid lazy bastard
Russians," snaps Stern. "They're under communism so long they
can't even produce anything." Amy Fisher, the Long Island
teenager charged with murder, has just appeared on a TV tabloid
show. "I wanted her to take off her clothes," says Stern. Former
Rifleman star Chuck Connors is dead: "I never liked him. Hated
that show."

    And that's just the tame stuff. On any given morning, The
Howard Stern Show might feature a game called Guess the Jew, in
which callers try to pick the Semitic celebrity from a choice
of three. Or a good-looking actress might show up in the studio
and set off Stern's riotous hormones. (To Sally Kirkland: "I'm
completely aroused by you . . . You wearin' underpants?") Stern
demeans women, insults blacks, makes fun of the handicapped.
Comedian Richard Pryor, who suffers from multiple sclerosis,
should come on as a guest, says Stern, so they can "watch him
go in and out of the conversation." Stern then imitates a
slurring Pryor trying to remember the name of his daughter.

    Howard Stern is radio's most notorious "shock jock," and
a few minutes of his program is enough to show why. But the
biggest shock lately is how popular he has become. Stern's
morning show is ranked No. 1 in New York City, and has spread
to eight other cities, with one more (New Orleans) soon to join.
In Los Angeles, where he went on the air just over a year ago,
Stern's is now the top-rated morning show. In Cleveland, Stern
has been on for only nine weeks and has doubled his station's
ratings. His hard-core fans, mostly young white males, have been
joined by an increasingly diverse and sophisticated audience,
many of whom have a love-hate relationship with radio's reigning
bad boy.

    Stern's late-night TV show, a raunchy comedy-talk program
syndicated by New Jersey's WWOR-TV, was canceled in July after
two years. But Stern will resurface this Friday as host of a new
weekly interview show on E!, the cable entertainment channel.
A movie career is threatening to take flight as well. Stern is
developing two scripts for New Line Cinema; he is already, not
surprisingly, promoting the one with the most offensive title:
The Adventures of Fartman.

    Stern and his groupies keep popping up, guerrilla-like,
across the media landscape. Appearing with Jay Leno on the
Tonight show during Leno's flap with Arsenio Hall, Stern threw
fuel on the flames by trashing Hall (a "moron") as well as
former Johnny Carson cronies Doc Severinsen and Ed McMahon ("two
of the biggest loads on two feet"). At her press conference
last spring, Bill Clinton's alleged ex-girlfriend Gennifer
Flowers was taken aback when a Stern reporter asked whether
Clinton used a condom. When Today's Katie Couric opened the
phone lines during a June appearance by Ross Perot, a Stern
shill got through with a bogus question about the radio host's
sexual organ.

    But it is on radio that Stern has made the most noise --
and got into the most trouble. The FCC last month announced its
intention to fine Los Angeles' KSLX-FM $105,000 for
broadcasting his "indecent" material. (At the same time, three
other stations were fined a total of $6,000 for airing an
earlier Stern program.) A long list of Stern offenses were
cited, ranging from lewd comments about Pee-wee Herman's
self-abuse to gross sexual insults aimed at Mark Thompson and
Brian Phelps, his chief L.A. rivals. ("First I want to just
strip and rape Mark and Brian. I want my two bitches laying
there in the cold, naked.")

    Stern has refused all press interviews since the FCC
action, but he has ranted endlessly about it on the air. The
FCC, he charges, is "targeting me because I'm the most visible
guy" and is "trying to put a dead stop to my career." When he
learned that FCC chairman Alfred Sikes was being treated for
prostate cancer, Stern's response was, "I pray for his death."

    A native of New York's Long Island, Stern, 38, graduated
from Boston University and began his radio career in 1976. But
he didn't hit his shock-jock stride until joining Washington's
WWDC in 1981. He then moved to WNBC in New York, but his lewd
material, including sketches like Bestiality Dial-a-Date, got
him fired. He was picked up by a struggling FM station, wxrk, in
1985, and in short order boosted its ranking from 21st to No.
1.

    Stern spends nearly five hours on the air each day,
gabbing with Quivers, his giggling Greek chorus (who is black
and female), and an array of in-studio regulars. Celebrities
occasionally join him, in person or on the phone, among them
regulars like Jessica Hahn. But the show is virtually all Stern
and is always pushing the edge. Stern's conversation is every
pubescent male's sex fantasy given voice; a one-man obscene
gesture to the politically correct and socially discreet; the
national id run wild. It is all an act, but a very savvy one:
Stern's over-the-top humor draws a road map of American
society's taboos of public and private behavior and brings them
audaciously, often hilariously, into the open.

    His knee-jerk, New York-edged hostility can be grating.
(Superman is dead. "Good. I hate him.") What makes it palatable,
however, is Stern's hyperbolic wit and a disarming undercurrent
of self-deprecation. Stern, who is married and has two children,
with a third on the way, often makes disparaging comments about
his own looks and his undersized sexual organ. He may be radio's
biggest egomaniac, but the insecure Long Island kid who had
trouble getting girls is never far from the surface.

    Stern's national success is an entirely new phenomenon in
radio. Though talk-show hosts like Rush Limbaugh and Larry King
have become hits across the country, Stern is the first to
dominate morning drive time from coast to coast with what is
essentially a transplanted local program. His show is full of
New York news and personalities, yet listeners around the
country seem transfixed, as if by some maniacal visiting street
preacher. Says Andy Bloom, program director of KLSX-FM in Los
Angeles: "He is like dropping a nuclear bomb on the market."

    Stern's detonations have won him enemies across the
political spectrum. Conservative watchdogs like the Rev. Donald
Wildmon placed him atop their hit list years ago. The National
Organization for Women recently threatened to boycott the E!
channel and its advertisers for giving Stern a new TV forum.
"Stern's show perpetuates misogyny, the notion that women want
to be abused," says Tammy Bruce, president of NOW's Los Angeles
chapter. Al Westcott, 45, a long-haired guitarist who lodged the
complaint that led to the FCC fines, describes himself as a
"product of the '60s" who feels that Stern should be reined in
because of his potential impact on children. Says he: "We're in
a society of latchkey children, who don't have parents at home
to tell them that the behavior Howard Stern is advocating is
inappropriate."

    Mel Karmazin, president of Infinity Broadcasting, which
owns Stern's flagship New York station as well as two others
that carry his program (in Philadelphia and Washington), claims
that surveys show there are virtually no children in Stern's
audience. He points out, moreover, that Stern never uses the
"seven dirty words" forbidden by the FCC and that his language
and subject matter can be found on plenty of TV talk shows. "You
may not like the humor," says Karmazin, "but that is why every
radio has an on-off button." Advertisers, surprisingly, have not
been scared off. Stern is a smart enough broadcaster to know
that his irreverence has practical limits: he does many
commercials live and never makes fun of them.

    Stern has other defenders. Chaunce Hayden, a frequent
caller who edits a New Jersey entertainment guide called
Steppin' Out, says he first got hooked on Stern in 1986, when
an ugly divorce had left him almost suicidal: "It was such a
release from the tension. It probably saved my life." A New York
broadcaster expresses grudging admiration: "Howard Stern does
on the air what other radio personalities do with the mike off."
Says Dick Cavett, who has called Stern's show several times: "I
admire the way he skirts disaster. I hope to be listening on
that day when Howard Stern goes too far."

    Too far for Howard Stern? That, radio fans, is a really
shocking thought.