The Fifth Hour: The King is Dead

and watch out. So there you go National Book Lovers Day today. And of course the most famous book club, Oprah Oprah's book Club, which started what thirty years ago, almost in the nineteen nineties. Oh my god, it's almost been thirty years since that started. Is also today the day to celebrate the garage sale. It's garage sale Day today, and the original garage sale goes back to the sixteenth century.

Here's a fun fact for alf the Alien, Opiner and Ferg Dog and anyone else who might be interested, including you. The original garage sale a rummage shale, rummage sales of unclaimed and you know, basically garbage cargo ships, stuff from cargo ships, defective cargo ships. They started having rummage sales. That was in the sixteenth century, back in the day. So it is National garage Sale Day, and I guess it actually goes back to the nineteen seventies. Before that,

they didn't really do that in modern society. Western society, residential sales known as rummage sales started taking place in the nineteen seventies. And of course today watch Out Watch Out on this podcast though, as we are just getting warmed up on a Saturday, we have the we'll get to the new Meatthead. We'll get to that, and the King is dead. The King is dead? Or is the king dead? We'll start with that. That's a good jumping

off point on this Saturday. And so this is how it ends, not with a bang, but a headline in a tabloid or is it true? Tales of the Naked Audio City. The rumors flying earlier this week while I was away, while I was away from my post the Watchtower in the overnight, that Howard Stern, the legend, Howard Stern reportedly dne done, done, Don Dunski at Sirius XM satellite radio canceled, retired, faded out into the Hampton's mist like a barefoot Gatsby. Who knows The details will still murky.

It is just a tabloid report, and as someone that had followed many tabloid reports, oftentimes they're very entertaining to read the tabloids, and many times they are complete non So, who knows, But the feeling is that Howard Stern is done, although it's not official official. He is a semi retired He's been semi retired for years. He takes a lot of time off from his radio post. He's got a good archive of content and he chooses not to work

that hard at his age. I don't blame him. He's old and he's made a lot of money and he can get away with it, so why not. But let me say this straight straight away, all right, as we look at this tabloid report, now I will assume the position that the tabloid got it right, knowing that Stern will be heard somewhere, but just for this particular moment, on this particular podcast, I do have some mixed emotions, all deeply mixed, like a cocktail of audio nostalgia and

disillusionment served over a bit cold rock of reality. Now, if you grew up on radio, and even if you just lived in a world where radio mattered, where radio met something, and I'm assuming the position that by listening to this podcast and listening to the overnight show that we do, that you have a place in your heart for audio content. You are someone that appreciates the theater of the mind, and as someone that dabbles in that industry,

I am grateful to you. I also obviously love audio content. So if you're someone in that domain, which I'm gonna assume you are, then you know that Howard Stern was not just a broadcast. No, no, no, no, no, no, no. He was in a category unto himself, the gold standard, the gold standard, the shock jocks, shock jock, the guy who built the house and then tore the house down, rebuilt it out of flaming garbage, and then sold tickets to the wreckage and sold out the joint. And yet,

and yet, somewhere along the way, Howard lost me. He did, And now it's possible I lost him. I grew up listening to Howard Stern's syndicated morning show. It's possible he lost each other. It happens in every long term relationship. Of course, Howard doesn't really know who I am. But one day I was sneaking a radio under the covers so my parents would not hear me listen to Howard Stern ranting about lesbians and making jokes about Richard Simmons.

Next thing, you know, Howard Stern. You wake up. You're an adult. Howard Stern's sipping Chardonnay in the Hampton's and grilling Jennifer Aniston about her skincare routine. And you're thinking, well, wait a minute, that's not the Howard Stern I grew up with. And so I stopped listening about twelve years ago, give or take. I'm going to say twelve years. Maybe it's been ten, maybe it's been fifteen. And I'm not

sitting here flexing by any means. I generally, as a rule, if you've heard me over the years, you know I try not to listen to too much talk radio. I don't want to be stealing other people's stuff through osmosis by listening to it and you're like, hey, I'm gonna do the same thing, even though you don't realize you're doing the same thing. So I try not to be that guy. I want to do my own original content.

I don't want to take from other people. Now. Obviously, what I am today is a product of who I listened to when I got into the business, and they rubbed off on me. However, at this point I just tried to avoid that as much as I can. So again, the fact that I stopped listening to him, whether it's ten, twelve, fifteen years ago, Howard Stern, it's not ag I'm not being braggadocious. That is merely a time stamp. As we

are having a conversation. The moment the Howard Stern Show stopped feeling dangerous and started feeling like it was processed by Access Hollywood with better drops. Is the moment I checked out, But that doesn't erase what came before it. And clearly Stern still has a much bigger audience than I could ever imagine that I would ever get. But for me, I was the guy that listened to Stern because he was the shock jock and he he would

go places no one else would go. And there was a time, maybe it was the late eighties, the nineties, the early two thousands, when Howard Stern was thrown one hundred miles an hour and he had all those pitches. It was gas. It was he had a killer curveball, he had a breaking ball, he had a just everything right everything. It was must listen appointment radio in an

era when people still made appointments to listen. Right now, the audio world that we have so much of it, so much of it, is as well listen when I want. It's on demand, like this podcast. You can listen to this podcast we recorded early in the day. You can listen early in the day, you can listen later in the day, you can listen the next day or two days later. It's just like it's at your convenience, but radio.

One of the great things about radio is you generally have to listen to it live to get the full essence of it's a live broad because one of the cool things about doing the overnight show is it's live while you're working, while you're trying to sleep, while you're having insomnia, all of that. So Howard Stern built this amazing whack pack and it was just so entertaining, like

all these rejects and goofballs. And you had somebody on his staff, Stuttering John, who would go out and do these terrible interviews with celebrities and ask him the most vile questions. And it was the funniest thing in the world because there's nothing celebrities would hate more on the red carpet than Stuttering John asking some weird questions. And

Howard Stern battled the FCC. I don't want to say he beat the FCC because he did run to satellite radio, but he was in the crosshairs with the Federal Communications Commission in America and he was going mono a motto. He destroyed multiple Morning Zoo guys and lapped the drive time DJs one by one by one. It was like whack the mole, they'll pop up. Stern'll knock him down. And it was the thing we talked about off and you could love him or you hated him, but you

had to deal with him. He wasn't just in the conversation Howard Stern back in those days, he was He was the conversation. And there's a term that we still use. Minus originated with Howard Stern back in the nineteen eighties and before I got in you know, I was a kid in those days. But there's a term that Howard Stern had program directors had used about Howard Stern and his ranting and all that. They call it the Stern effect, and it's still to this day something that is in

all media. It's a little different now because of podcasting, but in live audio or video, there's a thing called the Stern effect. You probably have heard of it if you've listened to the show. I brought it up multiple times in monologues, and if you're a fan of Stern, you know what I'm talking about. But people who really really hate Howard Stern would listen longer, would listen longer than those who loved Howard Stern. The reason people would listen for as long as because they wanted to make

sure they didn't miss an opportunity to be outraged. And that seam mindset today to this very day, is why a lot of people will watch on the Republican side, not to get political, but we're about to get political. But Republican voters will watch CNN to get pissed off, and Democratic voters will watch Fox News and get pissed off, and they actually watch longer because they get so offended

by all this stuff. And much of social media. One of the great hacks of social media is to send out things that are on the spectrum that upset people, like the culture wars of society. Right, People get offended by certain things, and you send those things out and you get caught up in what we call the matrix. And so Howard Stern back in those days again he was the conversation. Now in twenty twenty five, in the summer of twenty twenty five, well, now the whispers say

it's over serious. One hundred million dollars a year marriage that they had with Howard Stern. May finally and I say may, that's a weasel word, may finally be heading to divorce. Court, and yeah, I get it. One hundred million dollars a year buys you a lot of goodbyes. That is more money than Patrick Mahomes will make to play quarterback for Cansas City or show Hey Otani to hit home runs and pitch once a week for the Dodgers.

So that's more money than anyone, to my knowledge, has ever made to talk into a microphone outside maybe Rush Limbaugh or God. And some would say that those are one and the same in terms of audio content, but it still, it still stinks. It does this tabloid report because Howard meant something. I'm gonna tell you a little story story time on the Fifth Hour podcast. Read for a story you ready, So way back in January of nine. January of nine, they were swearing in a president named

Barack Obama. And while that was going on, I was given a piece of paper that was pink, a pink slip. I got whacked or excommunicated from Fox Sports Radar. I was gone, replaced by a can of soup. I vanished from the airwaves of Fox Sports Radar. I was off the air for six months and twenty six days. I was unemployed. I didn't have a gig it was also the most money I'd ever made in radio, because they had to pay me a lot of money to have

me go away. So these weird emotions where I was very upset, I didn't have a microphone, I didn't have a gig, and then at the same time I made more money than I had ever made and still to this day, I have made more money in twenty oh nine than I have ever made in radio while being in Radio purgatory, because I had been with the company at that point for a long time and they had this sweetheart buyout package where they just threw tons of money at me, but yet I didn't have a gig anyway.

Story continues, So one day around January twenty a few days after that, a gentleman by the name of Pete in Pittsburgh a legend dairy Looney tune and a crossover, a crossover from the caller Underworld who happened to be part of Howard Stern's whack pack and a member of the mal Or Militia simultaneously simultaneously. So one day Pete and Pittsburgh calls in to Howard Stern's show and they talked on the air for a few minutes about all

these people in radio who lost their job. But Pete and Pittsburgh, being a fan of the Overnight show, mentioned me by name, some overnight sports radio slub floating out in the ether. And now Howard Stern, Howard effing Stern is saying my name on his show and talking about me on his show. Now I didn't hear it. I wasn't listening to Howard during that day. I was not

tuned in the reason I knew that happened. Immediately, my phone blew up people I had not heard from in months, years old friends from high school, people i'd lost contact with family, Folks who couldn't care less about sports and knew that I kind of worked in radio, and they thought, well, I think you mentioned a radio guy that had your name. Could that have been you? They were calling me, like,

I just want to Grammy. It's like, Wow, I must have done something really special that shows you the reach. And that was what are we looking at sixteen years ago, twenty oh nine. Wow, I can't believe it's been sixteen years. But that's the reach, that's the power, that's the hammer that Howard Stern was wielding, and that's what made him, Howard, that's the magic. And yeah, somewhere along the way, he

traded his trench coat for a tuxedo. The rebel Howard Sern joined the gala, the met Gala rage against the machine, became ordures with the machine. The very people that he loved to goof on and make fun of. Now he was hanging out with the Hamptons. But you know what, that's life. Maybe the real shock, Jock, is that it took this long. That's the real shock that the jock took that long to become that guy. Give me that guy. Everything he used to goof on, he became. And so

now we say bye bye. Maybe, but I don't even know. He might end up working for the company I work for. Ihearten his rumors. He's gonna take his show somewhere else. I have no idea. I know I'm not involved in those conversations. That's above my pay grade. Right, He'll be somewhere only he's completely done. It just seems like Satellite Radio is not gonna pay him one hundred million, and I doubt Howard's gonna take a penny less. So the

other thing about this, he hit ninety five people. I read in one of the stories, ninety five people work on that show. I can barely get one person to work on my show. I get people showing up the last minute or after the show starts, completely high, not paying any attention. I mean, I can't imagine I mak ninety five people working for you to try to make you sound good. That's amazing that. Oh my god, I

would die for that. I mean, I wouldn't know how to handle having people trying to support you and make you sound good. Holy crap, that would be amazing. But any of listen, it's not about that. So Howard Stern maybe not officially yet gone, but in spirit even if he still goes somewhere, this is not the version of Howard Stern. I want to remember the Fastball's been gone for a while, the memory of the heater still lingers.

You remember the smoke, right, You remember the buzz, the You remember being a teenager and hearing something you weren't probably supposed to hear, and knowing, just knowing that this was radio that mattered. That's one of the reasons I wanted to get into radio. I was like, that mattered. That got a reaction out of people. So Howard Stern. He would there's never everyone's cup of teas. Certainly now

he is in everyone's cup of tea's. It's odd, though the base he's attacked the very core of his fandom, which seems counterproductive. It seems counterproductive, but hey, that's his choice. And if this is it, if the curtain really is coming down on the King of all Media, then we'll give the man his due. There was a time when Howard Stern ruled the audio world, absolutely ruled the audio world, and for a long stretch, nobody did it better. The

man made multiple books, movie big movie, private parts. And we have a feeling that Howard will still be around the radio dials Somewhere's old shows will live on. They have a long shelf life, some of those class bits back when Stern did radio as a loud mouth and would all the historyonics and all the dramatics and all the overstatement and all that stuff that made him great. Not the hanging out at cocktail parties with people who are Hollywood elites. Not that Howard Stern, the Stern from

back in the day. That's the one that people want to hear. That's the one that's got legs, all right, now meanwhile, it's being a broadcasting we'll have a theme on this Saturday podcast. So some other news which is now official. The news came out yesterday on Friday that Rob Gronkowski, Yes, that Rob Gronkowski, he of the frat boy charm and protein shake for brain's charisma, has gotten

one of the biggest jobs in sports television. He is replacing Jimmy Johnson on the NFL on Fox Sunday pregame set. He's got the chair. Just when you thought sports television couldn't dig deeper for quote personality, close quote, they strike oil in a field of synthetic testosterone and bro jokes.

So Jimmy Johnson, the man that had that job forever and ever and ever, the Super Bowl winning coach, a great college football coach, a master motivator, one of the last credible football minds on television, quietly fading into retirement. And in his place you got the Gronk, the guy whose main qualifications are that he played for the New England Patriots with Tom Brady. He knows Tom Brady, and

he's got the Hall of Fame resume. He's got a lot of followers on Instagram, and he has this uncannyability to turn every piece of analysis into some kind of punchline about partying or his body or now. The one advantage he has is he's much younger than everyone else, right, Gronkowski, Gronk on a set with Howie Long and Terry Bradshaw, who have been doing that forever and ever as well, so you can flash a smile of flex a bicep toll, chuckle.

He's a walking meme. He's perfect for the social media era, where the depth is a liability. The depth is a liability. Everything's got to be quick, it's got to be TikTok ready, no no long form, no long form. So let's also not pretend that the decision to have Gronkowski on television every week is about football. It is not. In my opinion, It is about optics. This is about the network executives who can to be obsessed with the jockocracy and they

want that. They want the engagement, not the enlightenment. And in many ways I understand the NFL pregame show is a dinosaur. It is as relevant today as a payphone or a typewriter. Now, there are people that use typewriters, and there are people that are in areas where cell reception goes out and they end up they end up using a payphone. The NFL pregame show is no longer a place where you go to learn something about a game.

It is a variety hour. It's chuckles, chuckles, chuckles, and then you throw some shoulder pads on some ex jock and you're on your way. You're more likely to get a viral dance routine on social media than some kind of breakdown on the Tampa two. Now Fox is not alone across the board. NFL pregame shows have become relics from a different ear of hollow monuments to a time when that mattered, a time before the interweb, back when Sunday mornings meant you turned on to hear actual football

minds from the old country break it down. You had the iconic IRV Cross back in the day, Jimmy the Greek, the handicapper, depending how old you are, Tom Brookshire. Now it's about the vibe, not the value. It's all about the Shticklach over substance, laughter overlearning. It's been that way for many, many years. So they're like the hardcore fan. They don't tune into these shows, and I understand the networks are like, there's not that many hardcore fans. There's

not Most people that watch sports are casual fans. They're just casually invested. You're not into the all twenty two film breakdown. If you want that, there are on the dark web. You can get it, and you can have it all consumed by Thursday. The algorithms have replaced the analysis, the social media threads, breaking down, blitz packages and all that stuff. That is what the social media world is for,

or parts of that world. And so if you get on television, you gotta be loud, and you gotta laugh a lot and have some catchphrases and do all the shikola and Gronk will fit perfectly in that mold. He chuckles, the clown in cleets. He'll dance, he'll grunt a little bit, He'll say yo a lot, and the producers will beam, thinking they have nailed the coveted eighteen to thirty four male demographic and that that'll play well in Peoria on social media. Here's the truth. Though again this is not

about Gronk being bad at the job. I'm not saying that by any means he will do what's asked of him. The real issue is what the job has become and what it no longer even pretends to be. Jimmy Johnson. Whether you like him or not, he's out right, he's gone. He retired. He's going to live the rest of his life out there in Key West and enjoy the hell out of it. Rob Gronkowski is in, and the football.

had played terribly, would I have done a monologue? Maybe I would have, probably not. He made his NFL preseason debut against the Carolina Panthers on Friday night, and by all accounts he looked pretty good. I didn't see the game. And Tom Brady got a statue yesterday that looked like it was from North Korea, like the Overside or Russia, a twelve foot bronze statue of Tom Brady outside Jillette Stadium. So that's good news for the Pigeons. Outstanding news there.

They can knock themselves out. And I also saw some of the Raiders there, Gino Smith and Max Crosby given a little rasthma task to the Seahawks fans there. The twelfth Man with the bird and all that, So that would been good for a male of Milogue and all that. But listen, we've done what we've done here and we will move on. We'll have the mail bag on Sunday. Have a wonderful Saturday here, enjoy the heck out of your day today, and we'll catch you on the Sunday mail Bag. By Folation