The Daily Stern: Together again?
: Defamer has what it carefully labels a completely unverifiable rumor du jour: that Viacom is thinking about buying Sirius satellite to get Howard Stern back.
Well, I’m a Stern fan but even I wouldn’t say that they’d do it just to get Howard back. They’d do it to get a piece of the sky — and the future — so they’re not stuck down on earth — in the past. Sirius is the one to buy because it is cheaper and just took on a bunch of debt; a Viacom investment makes sense.
Stern has been talking about ways the companies could work together. He also vowed this morning to stop talking about satellite or else he’ll find himself off the air. (A colleague here thinks Viacom has to take him off six months before the end of his contract so he doesn’t lead up to his Sirius launch with the full power of broadcast behind him.)
Note also that Les Moonves was on Letterman last night, talking about Stern at length.
Says Defamer:
The crazy chatter further holds that Viacom co-president/future galactic dictator Les Moonves was so despondent over Stern’s departure from his loving embrace (and over the possibility that the FM portion of his empire will be decimated) that Stern will now get to do his plain, old, over-the-air radio show in a new, commercial-free format. The upshot: Stern gets to keep his huge audience, Viacom finally shows they aren’t taking him for granted, and Moonves gets Sirius’ satellite pipleline to eventually deliver mind-control rays for his coming invasion Viacom content into the world’s automobiles, assuring there is no place where we will be safe from Real World and Everybody Loves Raymond reruns.
: UPDATE: The voice of experience says no way.
