The Corsair
Is The Joe Rogan Experience the New Howard Stern Show?
The parallels between the meteoric careers of Howard Stern and Joe Rogan are striking. Although the two libertarian talkers are presently feuding (Rogan presently thinks that Howard is too “woke”), they have more in common than not. At least in their ultra pro-capitalist, free speech absolutist beginnings.
Howard Stern, who is presently leaning into what can only be properly construed as an “evolution,” began his career as a shock jock. From 1994 to 2001, Stern was the highest-rated morning talker, with 20 million listeners. He gained such a rabid following by outrageous and dehumanizing radio segments, such as throwing bologna at stripper’s bottoms, his developmentally disabled “wack pack” and asking celebrities when and how they lost their virginity. After numerous conflicts and fines from the Bush the Younger’s conservative FCC, Stern left terrestrial radio altogether for the libertarian wild west of unregulated Sirius Radio.
And in his first few years at satellite radio, unfettered by FCC rules, Stern’s show was still drawing a large and influential audience. Never underestimate the market value of a relatable white guy talking in bro code. The show still made the papers and the gossip shows back in the Aughts, when the papers and the gossip shows still mattered, somewhat. In his first years at Sirius, Stern made roughly $100 million annually. But since the COVID lockdowns — and, perhaps, Stern’s kinder, gentler evolution — the show has lost quite a bit of its mojo among the ever-increasingly macho and unforgiving libertarian set. Instead of raising the stakes into the realms of physical violence, like Joe did, Stern started doing in-depth celebrity interviews.
Howard’s “decline” has occurred after his latest contract signing in which he is now paid hundreds of thousands of dollars per show. At 69 years of age and now happily married to the stunning model Beth Ostrosky, Stern divides his time between Palm Beach and Long Island, with friends including Paul McCartney, Jennifer Aniston and Alec Baldwin. Domesticity has set in, for sure. The old man is enjoying a good winter and probably works just tokeep out of his younger wife’s hair all day. There is no longer much need, at 69, at testosteronal rage against the proverbial machine.
In 2020 The New York Times revealed that Joe Rogan got paid $200 million for a three and a half year contract by Spotify, not too far off from Howard’s original satellite radio contract. Further, Spotify was taking a big risk in awarding Rogan the biggest podcasting contract just as Sirius was in making Howard their marquee programming and spending millions on The Ringer. But Spotify’s news yesterday of job cuts brings up some serious questions that deserve answers. “It spent over a billion dollars on acquiring podcast networks, creation software, a hosting service and the rights to popular shows like The Joe Rogan Experience and Armchair Expert,” Ashley Carman and Kamaron Leach wrote for Bloomberg. Further, Dawn Ostroff, Spotify's former chief content and advertising business officer, who brought Rogan in, has just recently left the company. Was it worth the expense, now that the risk-taking executive that brought Rogan in from the cold is out?
These are the same sort of questions that fans are asking about Howard Stern at SiriusXM right now. Thought pieces on Howard’s cultural decline are multiplying. Why doesn’t he pay his hardworking staff better? fans ask. More and more employees — from Artie Lange to “Scott the Engineer” — are on the out. The words “sell out” come up more and more frequently in Google searches for the Stern Show. And Spotify yesterday cut 6% of jobs, which is generally in line with tech company job cuts post-COVID lockdowns. But wouldn’t the streaming audio company be in much better shape without the financial baggage of Joe Rogan? Or, then again, would Spotify be in a worse position without such a large marquee program keeping them in the firmament? Stern is, by the way, “the marquee program business model,” par excellence.
These meteors once collided. In the early 2000s, Joe Rogan was a fairly frequent guest on the Stern show. They talked about (of course) strippers and sex and gambling and the comedy world in the crudest ways imaginable. In those days, Stern occupied roughly the same cultural position — bomb throwing, testosteronal, white bro culture hero — atop the digital audio mountain which Rogan occupies today. Rogan still speaks of Stern with respect, but the feud persists. It is interesting that Donald Trump, another early Stern fellow traveler, is just as critical of the new, “evolved” Stern. The Joe Rogan Show is, whether or not Stern wants to admit it, the heir of the original Howard Stern show, so there will be a natural primate competitiveness between the two, perhaps until the end of their days.
Stern meditates, is married, has gone to therapy for years and now interviews A-List celebrities — especially Boomers — as a peer. Often those that he interviews become his friends, through elective affinity, perhaps. In private they probably share tax avoiding tips and vacation on the same yachts among the same people. This is not to say that Howard Stern is now a highly sophisticated, three-dimensional human being, but he has transitioned into something far more than just an hyper-aggressive, precocious libertarian teenager burning bright in the forests of the night. Rogan, by contrast, torches everything in his orbit.
He hunts, revels in his masculinity, offers guests Elk meat and prefers the company of manly men talking about unexpected encounters with wild animals. Extreme sports, like human cockfighting and boxing, are more regular than rare. Rogan smokes weed and cigars on-air and is every bit the free speech absolutist as he was 20 years ago. No one would call Joe Rogan a gentleman, least of all, Joe Rogan. Nothing is off limits in conversation (But is that a good thing, though?). Even absurd conspiracy theories by shady, scuzzy types and blithering idiots like Ted Nugent get hours of airtime to spew dude chatter. Rogan is unrepentant, reveling in being part Neanderthal. But every once in a while — like in his interview with Mike Tyson — when game recognize game, a truly interesting, provocative conversation takes place.
But for Hundreds and hundreds of millions of dollars, though …?
Never underestimate the market value of a relatable white guy talking in bro code.
Everything, Everywhere at the Oscars. (Variety)
“She appreciated his breadth of knowledge and sense of humor, she said, and especially his unpredictability—even if, yes, he might sometimes be a bit of a button-pushing contrarian. ‘I disagreed with him,’ she allowed. ‘Like, I think women are super funny.’” (Molly Fischer/TNY)
“Local journalism groups representing more than 3,000 local newsrooms have come together to create a new nonprofit that aims to save local news through bipartisan public policy initiatives, mostly centered around tax credits.” (Axios)
Layoffs hit the Wash Post. (VF)
The Billionaire Model in News is Fading. (SEMAFOR)
America’s Messiest Senate Race Is Already Underway (TNR)