Shock Jock Howard Stern's weekend, late night syndicated show from King World
(inherited from CBS' Eyemark) will end its run this Saturday.
Although the show, based on his radio show for co-owned Infinity, was cleared
on a number of CBS O&O's, it had never been a ratings powerhouse.
King World is reportedly looking to develop a new, late night weekend series
to replace it.
E! continues to run two episodes of its half-hour episodes of its own late
night video version of Stern's drive-time radio show at 11-12 p.m.
The Howard Stern Radio Show launched on CBS O&O's and a handful of
other stations in August 1998, with most stations carrying it on Saturday nights
at 11:30 to try and eat into the audience of NBC's Saturday Night Live
franchise.
A handful of stations dropped the show soon after, citing content
concerns.
But even those conceded that the show had brought new viewers to the timeslot
and improved on the ratings performance of the shows, mostly syndicated reruns,
that had previously occupied the time period.
Stern had trumpeted the CBS show the previous April, saying it would contain
the same scatological humor as his radio show.
When asked by reporters whether such a show could air on the Tiffany network
(though technically it was not on the network, but syndicated by it), Stern
replied: 'Tiffany is a stripper's name.'
Stern also had a syndicated TV show, The Howard Stern Show, on WWOR-TV
(distributed by All American Television) that ran from 1991 to 1993. -- Joe
Schlosser and John Eggerton
