There are rumors that O&A are moving back to regular radio to take over for David Lee Roth, who replaced Stern.
The way such a deal would work would be for O&A to do a delayed simulcast with Free FM, to allow Free FM to edit portions of the show prior to broadcast. In addition, the O&A show would be expanded by 1 hour on XM, in order, to provide extra material for Free FM for those times when O&A’s XM content is unsuitable for general FM broadcast.
O&A have been hinting on the air that this rumor is true. If true, this would be awesome. O&A already, just by virtue of being on XM, have a larger audience than Stern. If they had a version of the show on FM, there would be no comparison. The fact that they’d be taking over Stern’s timeslot and former station would be especially sweet.
Why all the animosity toward Stern?
I was a Stern fan growing up, but I got hooked on O&A in high school when they were regular DJ’s on WAAF in Boston. Over the last few years, I think they’ve been outright funnier than Stern.
These days, it’s tough to be a fan of both. When O&A worked at WNEW in New York, they apprently pissed Stern off and since they both worked for the same parent company (Infinity Broadcasting, now CBS Radio) Stern was able to go to the boss and have a gag order put on them, and they weren’t even allowed to say his name. There was a famous show where Anthony eventually went nuts and kept saying “Howard Stern” on the air repeatedly, and the censors kept dumping out, until they finally had to go to commercial. I remeber the show. It was pretty clear proof that they were being censored by the bosses.
Pretty hypocritical for the guy who made a living as a boundary-pushing free speech advocate.
O&A have recently been playing clips of Stern, back in the day, criticizing DJ’s for taking Friday’s off because morning radio is a habit for people and DJ’s who don’t work all 5 days are cheating their listeners. A few weeks back, Stern moved to the 4 day format and no-longer works on Fridays.
I second Tom’s comments regarding Stern. His show remains entertaining much of the time (though I won’t pay to hear him on Sirius), but as a man he is full of self-contradictions and self-victimizing rationalizations.
I never found Opie and Anthony as funny as Stern, but that’s a moot point since I don’t have XM and I don’t live in an area that would broadcast Opie and Anthony if they return to terrestrial radio.
If you have DirecTV you can listen to them for free (well, for no more than you are already paying a month).