Siriusly.....

Howard Stern has gotten in the news a bit lately with all that "Sanjaya" fever. He was personally laying claim to the fact that this 17-year-old car alarm was persisting on American Idol because he was telling his fans to vote for him. Well, obviously, that was misguided math. With his move to Sirius, Stern lost probably about 5 to 6 million of his regular listeners. Yes, he had that many weekly people on his terrestrial radio show. And, since Sanjaya has now boarded that slow boat to India, Stern's alleged power of persuasion evaporated anyway.

I think it also pointed up something that I figured out a long time ago.

Howard Stern is no longer relevant.

Let me preface this. I used to be a big Howard Stern fan. I started listening to him in the early 90s and discovered that the "shock jock" label was a bit over the top. Sure, there were moments where I cringed. I could do without the focus on porn stars and bodily functions. But, overall, there was a lot of good stuff on K-Rock every morning. It was essentially an R-rated version of the old Jack Benny Show. Everybody on the show had their carefully defined characters and the dynamic worked. It was funny stuff. And, I wouldn't miss the last half-hour of the morning when he and Robin Quivers discussed the news headlines of the day. It was always a super-smart conversation that resulted in some riveting radio.

So why didn't I follow him to Sirius? Well, I can tell you that my disconnect with the man started much earlier than his satellite move.

Back when Howard was happily married to Allison with three daughter and comfortably esconced in his Long Island suburban home, Stern was the typical working stiff. He would go to work and spank some strippers, but you had a sense that he would go home at the end of the day and be...normal. If he got a little too crazy on the air, his wife would call in and you would hear those conversations on the air. If he would sneak out to Scores with the other guys from the show, it would be all about how to explain this all to Allison. It was almost like a super edgy, sexually ramped up episode of the Honeymooners. He was like Ralph Kramden overstaying too long at the Raccoon meeting with Ed Norton.

It was all very relatable and a great listen.

Then, he and Allison announced their plans to divorce. I sensed at that very moment that he was undergoing a change that would shift him away from his audience. In my humble opinion, it was a career/life altering event.

All of a sudden, the average Joe had moved out of the house to exclusive digs in Manhattan that are probably affordable to about 0.25% of his audience. He would yak now about the size of his limousine and how he would get into the hottest and trendiest places in town.

And he hooked up with Beth O, some box of rocks he probably found wandering around the Hamptons. Her talent is still yet defined, except she can probably touch her ears with her ankles. Now, they're engaged and the midlife crisis has gone full circle.

So, when he now fools around with buxom porn actresses on the air, he's no longer a guy trying to see how far he can get without his wife finding out. Now he's just a 53-year-old dirty old man.

He fancies himself now a political pundit. He spouts weird theories about government and claims to have inside connections, when indeed the most inside he gets is probably the men's room at Nobu's.

He used to blast the pomposity and complete insanity of Rosie O'Donnell. But, now he softens on her, since his beloved Beth O has had the opportunity to occasionally guest host on the View.

Like Joan Rivers becoming the very plastic surgery joke she used to make fun of, Howard now tolerates the same celebrity mediocrity he would once attack on the air.

And, he's working less now to boot. On Sirius, they run only four days of new shows. Fridays are reserved for reruns. Some of the shows date back as far as 1997. Folks who subscribed to Sirius primarily for Howard should be outraged.

We really can't tell how much of Howard's audience has left him because they simply didn't want to shell out twelve bucks a month. But, I am betting that a bunch of them didn't follow because he simply ceased to be interesting to them.

Count me in that number.

Dinner last night: prime filet and sauted mushrooms at the Grill on the Alley in a birthday dinner for my roommate.