February 24, 2011 | 1:07 pm

Ashley Madison HEARTS Howard Stern

Posted by Rob Eshman

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One of the remarkable achievements of Howard Stern is how he built his career despite being shunned by many mainstream advertisers.  Coke, McDonalds—all the family brands shunned him (though, as he has pointed out, they do more to poison America than he ever did). On terrestrial radio he attracted mostly B level advertisers—jewelers, credit companies, etc.  (Sit n Sleep is A Level—because they advertise in The Jewish Journal too).  On satellite, with its smaller audience, he’s had to go to level C: back hair shavers, a product that deoderizes your nether regions, and the latest, Ashley Madison, an online service that allows married men and women to meet up for discreet affairs.

Howard has done some great interviews with the founder of Ashley Madison, Noel Biederman, really digging into how it works, the morality of it, Biderman’s own family life. And it turns out the company, perhaps due to its Stern advertising, has been a phenomenal success.  Our singles logger Ilana Angel read a Bloomberg Business Week story on it., and then went online under an alias to learn more about the men who populate the site.  She writes:

I was intrigued and decided to take a look.  I registered an account using false information.  The only good thing to came out of my snooping around is that for 48 hours, I was 5’6”, 120 pounds, had long blonde hair, green eyes, lived in New York City, and was married.  Good times.

I filled out the basic information needed to get started and began to look around.  Oh.  My.  God.  Within 10 minutes I was bombarded with messages.  By messages of course I mean men offered to “make me feel like I have never felt in my life, with the light touch only they could give me”.

The most fascinating thing was that half of the men included full frontal naked photos of themselves.  Important to note these were not just Polaroid’s people took for fun.  There were some in positions that clearly required a yoga background, and someone else to take the photo.

Who took these pictures?  If most of the men on this site are in relationships, then did they ask their partners or wives to take the photo?  Are there women out there who feel so safe in their intimate relationships that they can take these types of pictures of their men?

Ilana isn’t shy.  She has opinions.  She finds the whole thing loathesome.  Howard himself seems a bit skeeved by the whole thing.  Despite his reputation among non-listeners, he preaches loyalty and monogamy in his relationships on the show.  I don’t doubt, at the end of the day, where he stands on this, but I do admire that throughout his career, Howard has made the best of the advertising he has been able to get, and has been fiercely loyal to them—a good lesson on how to succeed in the media business.

Read Ilana’s piece here.

February 7, 2011 | 2:10 pm

Howard Stern v. Piers Morgan, Round 2

Posted by Rob Eshman

Howard v. Piers, Round II

Piers Morgan came into Howard’s studio today, trying to breathe life into his one-sided feud with Stern.  Stern indulged him for a while, because it was good radio.  But, really, here’s the only question Stern needed to ask Morgan in order to put an end to his fantasies:  Can Morgan imagine that anyone, ever, would pay Morgan $500 million for his show?

If Morgan answers yes, he gets a D for delusional.  If he answers probably not, he gets an A for honesty.

But Howard offered Morgan free and excellent advice for how to build audience: don’t be neutral.  Have a personality.  Have an opinion.  It doesn’t have to be left or right, it just has to be you.  A lot of attention, and credit, goes to Jon Stewart for trying to stake out a point of view between the kneejerk extremes.  During the run up to what he called his “The Million Moderate March,” Stewart said our job is to take back the national debate from the 20 percent on either ideological extreme and from the cable news shows that depend on those extremes to provide reality-show-level drama and pundit fodder.

But again, Howard Stern was ahead of the curve on this.  Long before Jon Stewart became Will Rogers, Stern had carved out an on-air political ideology that was neither Left nor Right, Democrat or Republican.  He was, in broad strokes, Libertarian in the sense that he spoke out for gay rights, privacy, gun rights and limited government, Republican in that he liked Republican candidates who were truly fiscally responsible and for a strong military, and Democrat in that he appreciated the need for equal rights, fair taxation, public spending on education.  In other words, like Stewart, he’s always been for competence, pragmatism, an expanded sense of self-interest and a strong but smart defense. These values aren’t left or right, but Stern—like, later on, Stewart—could get really passionate and worked up about them. The fact that his politics is values-based rather than party-based made his political opinions unpredictable and therefore refreshing.

Memo to Morgan:  copy Stern.  Figure out what values you stand for and defend and argue those with your guests.  It works for Stern and Stewart, and it’s actually better for America.

A last thought on the $500 million.  Arianna Huffington just sold HuffPo to AOL for $300 million.  That’s $200 million LESS than the Stern Show got from Sirius five years ago. Granted it’s not an apples to apples comparison, but it shows you the enormous value Howard and his team created.

All you SeriousStern fans, you can follow me (as long as you’re following @HowardStern) an @EshmanRob

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