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Hanging with Howard in his studio | apr72006_871_lg

ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY: After 12 years, E! ended your show, its top-rated program. Instead of shopping it to another TV network, what made you want to start your own?
HOWARD STERN I needed control. Maybe I could pioneer a channel where I control the content. Now I don't have a presence on a broad system, but I'm never going to get smacked with ''You're obscene.''

Right now all of the HTVOD programming is related to your show. Any plans for non-Stern content?
Maybe the Howard TV brand can mean something like National Lampoon did in the '70s. You'll go there for all kinds of edgy stuff. For example, I was once at the NATPE convention [where syndicated programs are sold] and I ran into a guy who had a TV show that was women in bathing suits and high heels bowling. That was it. It was the freakiest show ever. And I went, ''If I had a network I would buy this show — my fans would think it was the greatest thing.''

Any similar plans for your Sirius radio channels?
We're going to keep trying to bring in more creative people. Sam Simon, who wrote for The Simpsons, is writing Desperate Howard-wives, a radio script about what happens in the lives of the show people's wives. [My girlfriend] Beth is trying to kill me because she wants my money, and the other housewives are furious because if I die, their husbands will have no work. We want to have radio sitcoms, radio movies. Maybe Fartman: The Movie. I pitched a show the other day for Triumph the Insult Comic Dog, and Robert Smigel loved the idea. And we may move this stuff over to On Demand. We can be content providers like no one has ever seen before.


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