Macenstein

Posted by Lab Rat

Back in October 2004, Howard Stern announced he was leaving regular “terrestrial” radio and jumping on board Sirius Satellite radio. Stern is often referred to in the press as the “’self-proclaimed’ King of All Mediaâ€?, but after seeing the latest ratings from his terrestrial successors, there can be no dispute that he certainly is at least the king of all radio.

While usually radio ratings are given from a 3-month analysis of ratings books, early numbers suggest even the most “successful� of Stern’s replacements (David Lee Roth?!?!) lost over 3�4 of his audience, while others, such as Adam Carolla, have seen ratings so small they are almost immeasurable (a 0.4 share).

Many other established radio personalities assumed they would see an increase in their audiences as Stern left for satellite, hoping the $13 a month would keep most of Stern’s 12.5 million fans from signing up. Well, so far only about 2.5 million HAVE signed up, leaving 10 million people for other on-air personalities such as Don Imus to pick up.

Yet it seems Stern’s listeners are staying away in droves. No one is apparently attracting Stern’s audience, and in fact, some of their ratings (like Imus’) are actually DOWN slightly. So, what ARE they listening to? Stern himself has suggested that his former audience is probably just listening to their iPods at this point after hearing what else is out there.

So, has Stern’s departure for “space� impacted iPod sales? Who knows. We’ll likely have to wait for an official 3-month ratings book as well as Apple’s next quarterly filing to begin truly speculating, and even then we’ll likely never know for sure how many (if any) iPod sales can be attributed to Stern.

I for one know I bought both a Sirius radio AND an iPod when Stern announced his move. I now record his show using Audio Hijack, and listen to it all day at work on my iPod. So there’s one sale attributable to the KOAM at least.