by Ed Vitagliano
The man who once claimed to be the “King of All Media” had to endure the humiliation of having his Saturday night syndicated television show dumped by CBS — because too few people were watching.
Howard Stern raised plenty of eyebrows when CBS Eyemark Entertainment gave the radio shock jock a national late-night platform for his vulgar and perverse brand of humor in the fall of 1998. Commenting early on, Stern promised that his show would have “a lot of nudity and lesbians,” “strippers” and “a lot of drunken dwarves.”
His show lived up to his prediction. After months of hype, Stern’s CBS show finally aired on August 22, 1998, with an hour full of strippers, lesbians kissing, nude women, and vulgar humor. But Bill Johnson, who was then director of the American Family Association of Michigan, did not sit idly by. Johnson headed up a campaign to convince advertisers on both Stern’s radio and television shows to reconsider their sponsorship. Many did, causing Stern to often rant on-air about AFA supporters — whom he called “religious freaks,” “stupid people,” and “religious nuts” — and AFA President Don Wildmon, whom he called “a maniac.”
Johnson later formed his own pro-family organization, American Decency Association, and carried on the fight against Stern. Johnson said that, over the course of the campaign, 93% of the advertisers he and his volunteers contacted withdrew as sponsors.
“This victory for decency is a testament to perseverance and faithfulness,” Johnson said. He noted that Stern started off on 79 TV stations in the fall of 1998; only 26 still carried the shock jock when CBS dropped his show.
Wildmon gives kudos to Johnson for his efforts. “One of the major reasons Stern’s show couldn’t get any traction was that advertisers shied away from his controversial antics,” said Wildmon. “Bill Johnson and his band of hardy and determined volunteers deserve most of the credit for that.”
Ed Vitagliano is news editor of AFA Journal, a monthly publication of the American Family Association.
(This article courtesy of Agape Press.)
