Some of the most fun that I have with this blog is tracking where the visitors come from; especially when they are coming from a search engine. Yesterday, Sirius XM‘s Howard Stern and his crew took the day off (it was Labor Day – we all had the day off). Well, he takes a day off and what do I get on this blog? That’s right – a bunch of hits from people who are Googling the “Howard Stern Vacation Schedule.”
Ha ha! I love it! Talk about having some impact on the internet!
As for the topic itself, no Howard Stern is not on vacation this week. Granted, I can understand why some fans feel the need to have the internet confirm this for them – I mean the man and his crew seem to take off every other week. Show producer Gary Dell’Abate claims that the crew gets 10 weeks of vacation every year. I don’t know about that – it certainly seems like they take off a great deal more time than that each year, especially when you consider that they get off every Friday and holidays in addition to those 10 weeks.
I think that it’s for reasons like this that Sirius XM subscribers and Howard Stern fans get frustrated when Stern talks about how he’s exhausted and he wants to hang it up when his contract is up. Sure, as a stockholder I want to see Howard stick around because I think it helps the brand. However, as a fan of the show I don’t want to hear about how this guy is tired and exhausted all of the time. He is on air at most for 20 hours each week (not including commercial and not-live-content breaks). Some folks out there do that much work in 2 days. Stern and the on-air talent do it in 4. That’s not a bad gig.
Anyway, the point of the post is that while Howard and his team go on vacation way too much as it is, they are not on vacation this week. Labor Day seems to have fooled some people.
Steve says
Have to defend Howard here…not sure how I missed this post originally.
I appreciate where you’re coming from when you say that it doesn’t seem like he’s doing a whole lot of work based on what’s heard on air, but you’d be amazed how much that nobody ever sees or hears goes into producing a show. I can’t even imagine how difficult a show the scope of his would be to pull off even with the crew he has. I’m sure he plays up the complaining since it’s kind of his gimmick, but that doesn’t mean his job is as easy as it appears.