When Did Howard Go Bad?

[Lil' Conner Peterson]

From listening to O&A over the years, one consistent theme was callers phoning the show and telling the guys they used to be fans of Howard Stern. Different people will give different events for when Howard went bad. I am of the opinion that when Jackie Martling left, that was the first real noticeable decline. Artie Lange was decent, but he wasn't Jackie. Although, when he did show up when him and Ant had the A&A Podcast, Artie was on par with Jackie as far as wit is concerned. Just want to know when you thought Howard went bad, please share your thoughts.

 

[TomFromNawlins]

I was all in with the Howard until 2000/2001. The no-Jackie, post-divorce celebrity Howard got boring around that time. Artie wasn’t enough to keep me interested.

 

[satanssockpuppet]

First, he chased Billy West away. Then he spent an entire year relentlessly hyping that shitty movie he did, to the point where every daily listener was just dying for it to be over. Then he was strangely quiet about his divorce, which dented his credibility, as nothing was ever "off-limits" before that. Then Jackie quit, which was the real death blow. The show was never the same after that.

 

[JoeCumiaDotCom]

There's a bunch of different moments you could pick.

Movie
Divorce
Jackie leaving
Artie heroin/ suicide attempt
America's Got Talent

 

[Uncle Floyd]

When he said "nigger" on the Channel 9 show, he lost me as a fan.

 

[EraGodless]

First, he chased Billy West away. Then he spent an entire year relentlessly hyping that shitty movie he did, to the point where every daily listener was just dying for it to be over. Then he was strangely quiet about his divorce, which dented his credibility, as nothing was ever "off-limits" before that. Then Jackie quit, which was the real death blow. The show was never the same after that.

Yeah, he never shut the fuck up about the movie and he went ballistic on Liz Smith who said she didn't think the movie had legs. She was of course correct. It finished #1 the opening week with an okay $15 million or so, and then it petered out. The fucking retard made a movie that was basically a love letter to his wife. During the divorce she could have just used the movie as exhibit A on why she deserved half of his money.

 

[EraGodless]

When he said "nigger" on the Channel 9 show, he lost me as a fan.

No child. He never said nigger ever-- I'm sorry you're so stupid.

 

[guest]

I was all in with the Howard until 2000/2001. The no-Jackie, post-divorce celebrity Howard got boring around that time. Artie wasn’t enough to keep me interested.

That's when I tapped out too. The divorce and Jackie leaving were twin nails in coffin for me.

 

[HotDogJoe]

Don’t know about him personally but the show got bad after Artie left.

It’s so weird how the pelican beaked kike pretends he doesn’t exist now too. He forbids any mention of Artie and they edit him out of any old clips that get posted on the Stern YouTube channel.

 

[JamieConway]

I'll give you the year it became COMPLETELY unlistenable. 2012. Artie was now 2 years removed and they stopped having comedians fill in the chair. His twat wife started to influence the content of the show...specifically talk about pet adoption and a bunch of other faux charities. Plus she wanted to be around famous people and there was no way famous people would hang around Howard if he was edgy and asking crazy shit like he used to so he sold out and became Hamptons Howie. It was sickening to watch as an old school fan.

 

[Riccardo Bosi]

I've listened to clips from the 90s via some Youtube guy who uploads old clips... it just does not hold up, but I understand at the time that it was great radio. Howard and Robin are not funny, and without Jackie as a punching bag the show is worthless. Artie brought life into the show, but there was always an odd tension between him and Stern and the show didn't feel organic.

Though Artie wouldn't have gone on to be as much of a success, him being in Norton's position would've been the best match. O&A appealed to blue collar straight guys, and Jim is such a degenerate cocksucker that he never really fit the bill.

 

[DieNortonDie]

He sucked when he was born. Fucking kike

 

[Jims_Maroon_Pants]

From listening to O&A over the years, one consistent theme was callers phoning the show and telling the guys they used to be fans of Howard Stern. Different people will give different events for when Howard went bad. I am of the opinion that when Jackie Martling left, that was the first real noticeable decline. Artie Lange was decent, but he wasn't Jackie. Although, when he did show up when him and Ant had the A&A Podcast, Artie was on par with Jackie as far as wit is concerned. Just want to know when you thought Howard went bad, please share your thoughts.

For me Howard was untouchable in the 90s, some of the funniest shit ever, and I was a hardcore OnA fan then. Sometime after 9/11 I started getting bored with his hours long rants over some of the most trivial shit. Plus his constant Hamptons talk. So I think early 2k is when he jumped the shark

 

[Slackjawed Cow]

Between his constant bitching about management and Americas got Talent. When he got on AGT there was no more offensive bits. He started pandering to the the gays since they are a core audience of those shows. Then he started scrubbing his old shows from the internet. Once Artie left it was where I checked out.

 

[RobertMewler]

I'll give you the year it became COMPLETELY unlistenable. 2012. Artie was now 2 years removed and they stopped having comedians fill in the chair. His twat wife started to influence the content of the show...specifically talk about pet adoption and a bunch of other faux charities. Plus she wanted to be around famous people and there was no way famous people would hang around Howard if he was edgy and asking crazy shit like he used to so he sold out and became Hamptons Howie. It was sickening to watch as an old school fan.

That's when I tapped out. Beth was my Yoko. I called that shelter to thank them for not putting Beth on the calendar that year. The older, salt-of-the-earth lady I spoke with made a knowing laugh like, 'yeah fuck that bitch' but was very professional. I posted about the call on reddit but no one believed me without a recording lol.

 

[Udders]

When he got the AGT gig, around 2012, then met and hired Marci Turk.

 

[Cuphead]

I would say around 2001 was when the show started to suck. By AGT it was unlistenable.

 

[bombvest]

howard was always a narcissistic POS but he had so much vitriol and aggression and he'd go into attack mode and mostly rip other narcissistic POS celebrities a new asshole four hours a day until they collapsed, including high level politicians. no body else had or has that power. listening to snippets of it decades later doesn't give the same experience as hearing it go down in real time. the only thing I find interesting about him today is how he still commands that fear. there's a whole backlog of cancelable dirt on him but no one is willing to try. jackie and fred are very talented, but that's not enough, you need charisma and an intimidation factor to pull off that aggressive humor in person. both when outside of old stern's orbit were/are forced to play nice. plus everyone is old now, it was a moment in time that can never be recaptured.

 

[satanssockpuppet]

Yeah, he never shut the fuck up about the movie and he went ballistic on Liz Smith who said she didn't think the movie had legs. She was of course correct. It finished #1 the opening week with an okay $15 million or so, and then it petered out. The fucking retard made a movie that was basically a love letter to his wife. During the divorce she could have just used the movie as exhibit A on why she deserved half of his money.

It was terrible, too. I went to see it on opening weekend and no one could believe how corny and weak it was. He spent a full year hyping it as the most unbelievably hilarious comedy ever made, then it turned out to be a shitty Betty Thomas by-the-numbers piece of shit.

If I'm not mistaken, Billy left in late 1995, then for just about all of 1996 it was movie, movie, movie, every fucking day. He ended the show at 10 sharp every day and that movie was all he talked about. Every regular listener was absolutely dying for it to end already, it was insufferable. Then after the premier he took a few weeks off, and everyone was anxiously awaiting his first new show, particularly to see how he'd address the fact that his movie came and went in a weekend and wasn't the biggest film of all time, as he'd predicted it'd be. Then he came back and more or less ignored it, with a few weak defenses of the box office numbers and etc. It seriously dented his credibility with his audience.

Another shark-jump moment: when he hired the woeful Crazy Cabbie. One day not too long after Jackie quit, Howard introduced Cabbie, telling his audience how hilarious he was and how we'd all instantly love the guy, and everyone was like WTF, as up to that point he'd never forced a "wacky" character on his listeners that way. The more popular weirdos like Stuttering John, Hank and Crackhead Bob kind of became popular organically, via Stern goofing on them, but with Cabbie it was 100% contrived.

 

[satanssockpuppet]

IMO Stern never caught enough shit over how he handled Retartie. The guy was obviously an out of control junkie with a raging drug problem, and Bugle Beak used it as fodder for the show, like it was fun to goof on the slobbering fat nodding retard, just like how he used to goof on Jackie with the beer and weed. Then when the retard flew off the rails, Howie couldn't distance himself fast enough. He's such a stereotypical "me first" kike, a backstabbing, sidewinding Jew who was more worried about negative publicity than the fat moron's well-being.