Howard Stern's New Challenge
Shock Jock Has Second Thoughts About Cancer Prayer
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Play CBS Video Video Outtake: Newsroom Tour Exclusive Outtake: Radio host Howard Stern gives Ed Bradley a tour of the "Howard 100" newsroom.
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Video 60 Minutes: Howard Stern Radio host Howard Stern is just weeks away from his much-publicized jump to satellite radio. "60 Minutes" commentator Ed Bradley profiles the shock jock.
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Video Reporter's Notebook Ed Bradley talks about his interview with Howard Stern, and the infamous shock-jock's move to digital radio.
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Howard Stern (CBS)
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Howard Stern, speaking with 60 Minutes correspondent Ed Bradley. (CBS/Aaron Tomlinson)
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Video Howard Stern Unshackled See clips and only-on-the-Web outtakes from the shock jock's "60 Minutes" interview with Ed Bradley.
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Photo Essay Howard Stern He calls himself "The King of All Media," but you might know him simply as the "shock jock" Howard Stern.
Stern says he is making some progress on the relationship front. Today, he lives in Manhattan with Beth Ostrosky, a 33-year-old model from Pittsburgh whom he met five years ago.
She told 60 Minutes her mother wasn’t very happy about it.
“My mother is a super conservative Catholic woman who…” Ostrosky began to explain, when Stern chimed in.
“This is great. We - so - just real quick. She, we,” he interrupted.
“You've got to control her story?” Bradley asked.
“Okay, I'm sorry,” Stern apologized.
“No, this is good. That's, I…” Ostrosky continued.
“Yeah, I do. This happens all the time,” Stern said.
“So I met Howard at a dinner party. I called home and I said, 'Mom, I met the most amazing man.' And she was so excited for me. And I mentioned who it was. She hung up the phone. She went to church. And she didn't talk to me for two weeks,” says Ostrosky.
Stern told Bradley that three months into this relationship, Ostrosky had told him, “Howard, this relationship is all about you.”
“Oh, I think I knew that from day one. But I'm okay with it. It's all about him, Ed. We watch TV, what he wants to watch. We eat. We wake up at five o'clock in the morning. We go to bed at eight. We, I love it, though. It's my life,” she says.
But Stern doesn't really feel it's all about him. “Just 97 percent of it,” he says.
But the radio and his audience are still the most important things in his life, Stern says, and the move to satellite is the last challenge of his professional career. It’s a gamble: will people be willing to pay for radio, or will Stern fade into obscurity? Stern says he’s obsessed with making it work.
“I think I'm probably a little too desperate to be successful,” he says.
But he is successful, having just signed a half-billion dollar, five-year contract.
“That will never mean a thing to me. I will never feel successful,” Stern says.
“Howard, you've had a successful book. A successful movie. A successful DVD. A successful radio program. Number one in I don't know how many markets. You've changed morning radio. And now you're going to satellite radio for a half a billion dollars over the next five years. You're not successful?” Bradley asked.
“When you put it that way, of course that seems successful. But when I'm up at two o'clock in the morning and I'm sitting and creating these two new channels, there's a fire in me that says, 'Oh my God. I can't disappoint that audience,’ regardless of what they pay me,” says Stern. “And maybe that's why I get paid a lot of money. When you hire me, you hire a nut who is going to work 24 hours a day for you and never, ever burn his audience.”
Stern has not disappointed his new bosses. They say he has already more than paid for himself by raising the Sirius profile, and by helping to increase their subscribers from 660,000 at the time of the announcement of his hiring to more than 4.7 million as of June 2006.
By Ruth Streeter © MMVI, CBS Broadcasting Inc. All Rights Reserved.

