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Stern Show Available On Demand
By David Hiltbrand, The Philadelphia Inquirer
Nov. 18--NEW YORK -- After 11 years of watching Howard Stern's raucous radio show shown on the cable channel E!, fans of the shock jock probably think they've seen it all, from drunken dwarves to porn stars.
Well, they ain't seen nothing yet.
In lower Manhattan, a handful of producers have been spending 14-hour days in a pair of editing suites, poring over 15,000 hours of footage, pulling out the most outrageous from the Stern archives.
Beginning Friday, this tawdry trove will be available to digital cable customers of Comcast, Adelphia and other major cable systems as Howard Stern on Demand.
For an introductory fee of $9.99 per month, subscribers to the package will get 50 hours of Stern's shenanigans, divided into categories like "Sexy Fun & Games,""Just Outrageous," and "Get Naked!"
The footage is brazenly uncensored, which means the gloves are off. So are the thongs and the mosaics that obscured the nudity all these years on the E! broadcasts.
"The difference between what you might have seen in the past and what you'll see now," says Doug Goodstein, the executive producer of Howard Stern on Demand, "is with this format, you have complete control. No commercials. Everything raw. Pretty much what happened in the studio."
For the rapidly expanding video-on-demand industry, which is available to an estimated 700,000 Comcast customers in the Philadelphia market, this project marks a significant departure.
"Movies have always been the bread and butter of our business," says Jacobson, the president and chief executive officer of In Demand Networks, which is providing the Stern storehouse. "First they were in theaters, then on DVD, and then they made their way to VOD. Finally we have a product that's never before been seen on television."
According to Jacobson, the cable operators were eager to put Stern on their menus, despite the often hardcore nature of the content.
"They know it's an active decision on the part of the consumer to purchase this," he points out. "Given that someone can't possibly be toggling up and down the program dial and come across this makes them feel a lot more comfortable."
It also represents a potential windfall for Stern as he prepares to leave commercial airwaves next month for the less restrictive arena of Sirius Satellite Radio. By March, next-day footage of his Sirius show, which will begin in January, will be offered as part of the On Demand package.
The primary challenge in preparing tomorrow's VOD launch has been logistical. "We decided when the show started to reedit everything from scratch," says Michael Gange, a supervising producer. Like most of the senior staff, he worked on the long-running E! series, reruns of which will be shown through the end of the year.
"There was so much material left on the cutting-room floor," Gange says. "Howard's radio show wasn't on for an hour. It was between four and five hours a day for 11 years. So that's a lot of tape we rolled. The first thing was to get back all the original tapes -- there were 50,000 of them -- that were stored in Los Angeles back here. Then we started watching them."
Of course, a full visual inventory would involve more manhours than were available. "It would take two or three years, 24 hours a day, 365 to watch it all," Goodstein estimates. "That's how much tape we had."
Pressed for time, they let the computers do the work. The content of all Stern's shows was entered in a couple of databases. "We started with thousands of shows," Goodstein says, "and looked for key words like nudity or strippers or weiners. That narrowed the list to 400 or 500 shows, and we went through again and got it down to 120, which equals our schedule for November and December, the first two months of our launch."
It's no surprise that the Stern uncensored material turns out to be seriously bawdy. But the creators insist that the programs have a lot more going for them than pure raunch.
"It's not just about the nudity," Goodstein insists. "It's definitely going to be there -- the fun, wild nudity stuff. But there's straightforward interviews with celebrities like Sylvester Stallone, Jose Canseco and Pam Anderson. And some porn stars who can do stuff with their private parts."
Just what TV has been missing.
-----
To see more of The Philadelphia Inquirer, or to subscribe to the newspaper, go to http://www.philly.com.
Copyright (c) 2005, The Philadelphia Inquirer
Distributed by Knight Ridder/Tribune Business News.
Stern Show Available On Demand
By David Hiltbrand, The Philadelphia Inquirer
Nov. 18--NEW YORK -- After 11 years of watching Howard Stern's raucous radio show shown on the cable channel E!, fans of the shock jock probably think they've seen it all, from drunken dwarves to porn stars.
Well, they ain't seen nothing yet.
In lower Manhattan, a handful of producers have been spending 14-hour days in a pair of editing suites, poring over 15,000 hours of footage, pulling out the most outrageous from the Stern archives.
Beginning Friday, this tawdry trove will be available to digital cable customers of Comcast, Adelphia and other major cable systems as Howard Stern on Demand.
For an introductory fee of $9.99 per month, subscribers to the package will get 50 hours of Stern's shenanigans, divided into categories like "Sexy Fun & Games,""Just Outrageous," and "Get Naked!"
The footage is brazenly uncensored, which means the gloves are off. So are the thongs and the mosaics that obscured the nudity all these years on the E! broadcasts.
"The difference between what you might have seen in the past and what you'll see now," says Doug Goodstein, the executive producer of Howard Stern on Demand, "is with this format, you have complete control. No commercials. Everything raw. Pretty much what happened in the studio."
For the rapidly expanding video-on-demand industry, which is available to an estimated 700,000 Comcast customers in the Philadelphia market, this project marks a significant departure.
"Movies have always been the bread and butter of our business," says Jacobson, the president and chief executive officer of In Demand Networks, which is providing the Stern storehouse. "First they were in theaters, then on DVD, and then they made their way to VOD. Finally we have a product that's never before been seen on television."
According to Jacobson, the cable operators were eager to put Stern on their menus, despite the often hardcore nature of the content.
"They know it's an active decision on the part of the consumer to purchase this," he points out. "Given that someone can't possibly be toggling up and down the program dial and come across this makes them feel a lot more comfortable."
It also represents a potential windfall for Stern as he prepares to leave commercial airwaves next month for the less restrictive arena of Sirius Satellite Radio. By March, next-day footage of his Sirius show, which will begin in January, will be offered as part of the On Demand package.
The primary challenge in preparing tomorrow's VOD launch has been logistical. "We decided when the show started to reedit everything from scratch," says Michael Gange, a supervising producer. Like most of the senior staff, he worked on the long-running E! series, reruns of which will be shown through the end of the year.
"There was so much material left on the cutting-room floor," Gange says. "Howard's radio show wasn't on for an hour. It was between four and five hours a day for 11 years. So that's a lot of tape we rolled. The first thing was to get back all the original tapes -- there were 50,000 of them -- that were stored in Los Angeles back here. Then we started watching them."
Of course, a full visual inventory would involve more manhours than were available. "It would take two or three years, 24 hours a day, 365 to watch it all," Goodstein estimates. "That's how much tape we had."
Pressed for time, they let the computers do the work. The content of all Stern's shows was entered in a couple of databases. "We started with thousands of shows," Goodstein says, "and looked for key words like nudity or strippers or weiners. That narrowed the list to 400 or 500 shows, and we went through again and got it down to 120, which equals our schedule for November and December, the first two months of our launch."
It's no surprise that the Stern uncensored material turns out to be seriously bawdy. But the creators insist that the programs have a lot more going for them than pure raunch.
"It's not just about the nudity," Goodstein insists. "It's definitely going to be there -- the fun, wild nudity stuff. But there's straightforward interviews with celebrities like Sylvester Stallone, Jose Canseco and Pam Anderson. And some porn stars who can do stuff with their private parts."
Just what TV has been missing.
-----
To see more of The Philadelphia Inquirer, or to subscribe to the newspaper, go to http://www.philly.com.
Copyright (c) 2005, The Philadelphia Inquirer
Distributed by Knight Ridder/Tribune Business News.