Howard Stern: Playboy Interview

There is no neutral ground for the self-proclaimed "king of all media," Howard Stern. In fact, he may be the subject of America's most intense love-hate relationship.

If you love him, you think he's a radio genius, holding the airwaves most weekday mornings for more than four hours with an unprecedented blend of irreverent, jaw-dropping comedy and wild personal revelations ("I'm hung like a raisin"). And if listening to him on the radio isn't enough—and for many it isn't—you can switch on the E! Entertainment cable network and tune in to his "Howard Stern Interview," a one-on-one conversation that often showcases Stern more than his celebrated guest. Or if all else fails, you can simply line up for one of his book signings (in New York he drew crowds of as many as 20,000 people at each of three such appearances in October 1993, at one point stopping traffic on Fifth Avenue).

But if you hate Howard Stern, you are hardly alone. His outrageous, uncensored spewing—about everything from the beating of Rodney King to his fascination with lesbianism—has earned him enemies in all corners of the political landscape. The Christian Right condemns him for his frank, often lewd, talk about sex and bodily functions; the politically correct Left disdains him for jokes about racial, ethnic and sexual identity. Stern, meanwhile, argues that he just spouts off the kinds of things people think but rarely admit out loud.

Stern bases his claim to multimedia royalty on impressive successes in diverse areas of the entertainment industry: On the radio, he has taken a New York morning show and made it a national success, broadcasting it in 16 markets, with number one ratings in New York, Philadelphia and Los Angeles. On TV, he was a hit first with his syndicated "The Howard Stern Show," which often beat "Saturday Night Live's" ratings in New York, and now with "The Howard Stern Interview," which has raised the profile of the once lowly E! network. And his pay-per-view TV events, such as the $39.95 New Year's Eve extravaganza this year, are frequently among the top draws in the PPV arena.

Finally, there's "Howard STERN: Private Parts," a wildly comic, autobiographical volume that became the fastest-selling book in Simon & Schuster's 70-year publishing history, with more than 500,000 copies in print in its first month. The book entered the "New York Times" best-seller list at the number one spot in October 1993—and stayed there for a month.

Yet even as Stern was celebrating his memoirs' rush to the top of the heap (his book party drew everyone from New York Senator Alfonse D'Amato to Mr. T to Joey Buttafuoco), parts of the retail industry, specifically discount department stores that sell books, were trying to pretend it didn't exist. The WalMart chain, among others, refused to stock it; Caldor, a discount chain, went so far as to edit the display version of the "New York Times" best-seller list in its stores, erasing "Private Parts" and moving other titles up a notch—a stunt that culminated in an apology to the "Times."

Enemies notwithstanding, Howard Stern seems to be doing exactly what he dreamed about from the time he was seven years old and first talked into a Wollensack tape recorder in his Long Island boyhood bedroom. Born January 12, 1954, the son of a recording-studio owner, Stern grew up in the towns of Roosevelt and Rockville Centre, New York and later moved to Massachusetts, where he graduated magna cum laude from Boston University. Having launched his radio career at BU (complete with his first firing), he began broadcasting professionally in 1976 at a tiny station in Westchester County, New York. He moved to a station in Hartford, Connecticut and then to WWWW in Detroit. When that station changed its format to country-and-western overnight, Stern decamped for Washington, D.C., where he landed at WWDC in 1981. There he teamed up with Robin Quivers, a newswoman and former Army nurse who today continues to play foil to Stern's on-air antics.

In Washington, Stern won ratings as he developed a reputation for controversy. In 1982, when an Air Florida plane crashed into a D.C. bridge shortly after takeoff, Stern went on the air, pretending to call Air Florida: "What's the price of a one-way ticket from National Airport to the 14th Street bridge?" he asked. "Is that going to be a regular stop?"

To this day, Stern is dogged by the story that he was fired for making the stunt call. In fact, by that time he had already caught the eye—and ear—of WNBC in New York, and it was only after he had signed to go to WNBC that WWDC fired him.

After the move to WNBC in 1982, Stern quickly ran up against his new bosses over the content of his show: how much music he had to play, how much he could talk between records, how many comedy bits he could do per hour, and the fact that he mercilessly tweaked the station's other on-air heroes, Don Imus and Soupy Sales.

Content ultimately led to his firing in 1985—specifically segments along the lines of "Lesbian Dial-a-Date," "Sexual Innuendo Wednesday" and "Mystery Whiz" (the last a game in which callers tried to name a celebrity based on the sound of him urinating). The press release announcing Stern's ouster referred to "conceptual differences that exist between Howard Stern and WNBC management." Stern's version of the story, however, is that NBC bigwigs caught a few moments of "Bestiality Dial-a-Date" and ordered his immediate dismissal.

But before the year was out, Stern bounced to New York's low-rated WXRK, where he quickly claimed the morning drive-time ratings throne from WNBC's Don Imus. Defying conventional wisdom that a morning show must be local, Stern began simulcasting his show to other cities, including Philadelphia and Washington, D.C., then gradually expanded his network to include Los Angeles, New Orleans, Las Vegas, San Francisco, Dallas, Boston, Chicago and other markets.

Even as he was increasing his radio reach, Stern was casting about for other media to conquer: first television, then books, now movies (a deal to make "The Adventures of Fartman," a Stern character, fell through at New Line Cinema, but other deals, he says, are imminent). And next: Late-night television? Stern's name has been bandied about as everything from a replacement for the Fox Network's failed Chevy Chase show to a competitor for NBC's Conan O'Brien, though he still has two years remaining on his radio contract.

Along with his increasing popularity comes additional scrutiny from his longtime foe, the Federal Communications Commission, which decided to implement and enforce decency rules for hours of the day when children might be listening. Beginning in 1988 the FCC levied a series of fines against the stations that air Stern, based on complaints from a handful of listeners. (One example for which Stern was cited: his on-air assertion that "the closest I ever came to making love to a black woman was masturbating to a picture of Aunt Jemima on a pancake box.") By January 1994, fines against Stern totaled more than $1.2 million. As a result, the FCC was holding up plans by Infinity Broadcasting (which owns WXRK and several other radio stations that broadcast Stern) to purchase three additional stations. Stern has vowed not to pay a penny toward the fines—and to take the case to the U.S. Supreme Court, if need be.

To find out how much difference there is between Howard Stern on and off the air, we sent Marshall Fine, a writer for Gannett newspapers, to talk with Stern at his WXRK office in New York. Fine reports:

"Getting Howard Stern to talk is no problem: He lives to talk. The challenge, it turns out, is in finding time in his schedule to carve out even a two-hour session. As we met over the course of a month to conduct the interview, Stern was in the midst of a publicity storm to promote Private Parts, including appearances on Geraldo and Donahue.

"When he's in the radio studio, Stern folds his willowy 6'5" frame behind a radio console, a tiny fortress from which he keeps the universe at bay with jokes, belches, come-ons, put-downs and the seven-second-delay button. But off the air, he is not the aggressive motormouth he is on his show (though he's hardly shy). For most of our sessions, he sprawled on a couch in his office, perpetually shielded behind his trademark sunglasses, and addressed each topic thoroughly and with candor. Although he often complained about the amount of time Playboy needed for the interview, and about the process itself ('This is torture'), he was gracious and friendly and eager to please.

"Most interesting was watching Stern, who prides himself on keeping no secrets from his audience, deal with so many personal topics. There were only two questions he refused to answer: about how he would host a late-night TV show, and about how much money he makes. When the subject was radio or TV or show business in general, he launched into elaborate, often graphic, answers. It was only when the subject turned to his own sex life—specifically his habit of (as he puts it) pleasuring himself—that I noticed something barely perceptible and completely unexpected: I swear I saw him blush behind his shades."