Howard Stern is a radio personality known for his often controversial statements and bits that regularly is on his radio show. Throughout most of his career he appeared on national radio such as the infamous WNBC and K-Rock. Nowadays he is available to listen to live on Sirius XM’s satellite radio for its premium subscribers. A spinoff demand TV service was launched and after 8 years of being frankly, well ahead of the competition, it ceased to exist in late 2013.
The on-demand service worked similar to how Netflix does now, with users being able to search the content they wanted to watch.
So we did some thinking and concluded that Howard TV would be an almost perfect fit for Netflix and we think some of the wheels are in motion.
For starters, it’s clear that Netflix wants to move into producing or owning exclusive rights to a lot of the content it’s showing and going to show, hence the mass exodus of EPIC movie titles. Having Howard TV’s back catalogue would literally mean hundreds of hours of exclusive content only on their service.
It’s also clear that Netflix wants to compete with the big boys in late night and talk-show entertainment as it announced earlier in the year that Chelsea Handler, E!’s ex-talk show host, would be producing an exclusive show just for them in a weekly format, unseen before on Netflix.
The king of all media is also known for some of the best interviews around with stars like Lady Gaga, Jeff Bridges and the late Joan Rivers to name but a few who’ve opened up on radio like they’d never do on national television. Plus we know that they’re still video recording these interviews because of the activity on Netflix’s Facebook page.
Having it would also hopefully would give a large audience to pull into Netflix. Sirius XM currently has 24.4 million subscribers which is around half that of what Netflix currently have in the states. Now, we’re sure there’s overlap here, but having a nice hefty audience that listens to Howard Stern wanting to watch his content on Netflix is only a good thing, right?
So there’s a good few reasons as to why it would be a good fit, but will it happen? Well it’s for Howard’s team and Netflix to hash it out but a renewal in Howard’s contract coming up and him leaving America’s Got Talent could suggest he’s going to be putting more time into his radio show and subsequently, a revival of Howard TV? It could of course work in the opposite in a scenario where he quits show business altogether.
We certainly hope it happens because there’s a hive of great content here almost for everyone. Great phoney phone calls, funny and often disgusting bits, the whack pack and of course, the incredible interviews.
What do you think? Could Howard and Netflix be a good fit? Let us know below.
Note : This is an opinion piece and none of it comes from Netflix, Sirius XM or the Howard Stern show.
