Open Letter to Howard

Open Letter to Howard -- I just shot off this email to the Stern show...

Howard (and gang) --

It was a tough first couple hours to listen this morning.

But completely understandable.

Life is too short to carry on doing something that isn't fun anymore. As Billy Crystal memorably said once, "It's just not fun."

Living in New Jersey, I've been listening to you since the afternoon drive on WNBC, "matured" along with you and the show, and even gotten my wife to become even a greater fan than myself. If you end up moving out of the broadcast space, we'll miss you. You've given us a lot of valued entertainment.

If you move to satellite, it'll be a good chance that I'll follow you there, although the chances would be enhanced if you didn't follow your Viacom family (MTV and VH1) to XM, but instead went to Sirius to balance out their NPR offerings. (I'll admit to being an aging boomer that, listens to "Howard all morning, and NPR all day." I know a lot like me who have such a dual radio listening personality.)

One concern I have, however, is that it won't only be listeners that follow you there. The pay venues of cable and satellite are the next targets of the religious right and pandering politicians. Buried in a recent Reuters story, as I'm sure you know, is the issue of indecency on cable...

> The Senate committee narrowly defeated an attempt to add a
> measure that would have applied indecency rules to pay television
> services. Those opposed to doing so warned that it could violate
> free speech rights.
>
> "The truth is the majority of the problems that we're facing are on
> cable and direct (satellite) television," said Sen. John Breaux, a
> Louisiana Democrat who offered the amendment to expand
> indecency regulations.

Breaux talks about television, but I doubt they'll leave radio out of their crosshairs. Sooner or later, cable and satellite might not be the safe haven that you're leading your listeners to believe. Just a concern.

You're also talking today more about the possibility of the web. Keep in mind that the web would allow for on-demand listening as well as live, not limited to drive time in a particular time zone. Through audible.com or the iTunes music store or other capitalist channels, highlights or even whole segments could be downloadable for a price, transferred to iPods, and plugged into the car radio. You pioneered modern radio syndication; you can probably pioneer a similar web-based delivery of your entertainment.

Finally, and again, this is probably something that you're aware of, Jeff Jarvis (former TV critic for TV Guide and People, creator of Entertainment Weekly, Sunday Editor of the NY Daily News, and a columnist on the San Francisco Examiner -- maybe a worthy guest on the subject) has a weblog that has been championing your situation as a symptom of the larger issues of creeping (creepy) nannyism, and the "culture of offense" that says if anyone is offended by something, it must be bad for everyone. Jeff has taken to include the tagline "It's not about Howard. It's about you." A few samples here, here, and here.

While people like Maher and other broadcasters disappoint, people like Jeff give serious thought and commentary on it. He's even inspired me to some comparatively weak (and largely unread, unlike Jeff) attempts at my own personal blogging on the subject as well.

Anyway, I've rambled enough. Thanks for 20 years of radio entertainment. Good luck in whatever path you take. A lot of us will follow.

f Bush
f Powell
f the American Taliban

-- Frank Patrick