Howard Stern’s Howard TV On Demand is the best talk show and reality programming on television

In these doldrums of summer, one really notices how slim and shallow the network’s offerings are; in the blush of publicity they’re great at making it appear something’s happening when nothing really is, but eventually one realizes it’s just new iterations of the same old tired soaps, game shows, overwrought “dramas”, and hacky sitcoms.  Howard TV is something perhaps only Stern (or Oprah, his counterpart for the non-Y-chromosome segment of the population) could pull off, in that it’s essentially an entire channel devoted to the universe of Stern, his radio show, and the various characters that orbit within its gravity.  Between the four-day-a-week Howard Stern morning radio show itself, the followup Wrap-Up Show, the behind-the-scenes activities of the Stern staffers, the ongoing circus that follows the show’s Wack Pack of hangers-on, and material drawn from the vault of videotapes originally shot during the time Stern was on the E! channel, there’s a near-constant flow of new, high-quality programming on Howard TV — I’d estimate there’s at least an average of around five hours of new content added per week.

The real downfall of Howard TV lies in its limited distribution.   Thus far the material produced for On Demand remains solely available there, which is all well and good if you happen to be on one of the cable systems that carries In Demand Networks, but if not, well, you’re pretty much SOL.  Especially now that Howard TV is branching out into producing more original programming (such as its two bowling shows and the Miss Howard Stern reality show), the service is perfect for Itunes video sales: it’s easy to imagine Stern fans loading up their ipods with the latest Howard TV content each morning for the subway ride into work, and the fact that this or another similar revenue stream isn’t being capitalized upon is ludicrous.  It’s the problem Howard has (so far more-or-less successfully) been combating since leaving terrestrial radio for satellite: sure, the show is great, but do people know?  If a person has neither satellite radio nor In Demand-enabled cable television (nor the proclivity towards filesharing), then chances are they don’t.  But if they could get a taste of what’s going on at Sirius and Howard TV on Itunes, it could lead them into purchasing more, perhaps regularly, and maybe even signing up for a satellite radio subscription — you know, once all the Sirius/XM merger issues are settled.  Without this additional avenue for revenue or exposure, the Stern circus will likely stay out sight and out of mind of most who don’t already number themselves among the converted.

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