Jim Norton Explains Why Opie Was Fired from Sirius XM - Joe Rogan

Hello freak bitches. They hated it so much because it was humiliating. And I got a reaction out of them and I just kept doing it. It was so much fun. And a lot of times Anthony at first hated it, but then Anthony started to love it. But then Opie never loved it. And it was always kind of fun to do because I knew deep down that Uncle Paul he hates. So I would always do Uncle Paul just to fucking make him sick. Because he couldn't get with Uncle Paul. Anthony of course could. Are you more comfortable now doing it without him? The radio show? Much. Much. Oh yeah. We stopped liking each other. I mean the reality is, I really mean it. I don't wish the guy had bad in his real life. I don't want bad shit to happen to him. But we simply stopped liking each other. But he was enjoying his afternoon show much more without me than he was with me. I got the morning spot for whatever. I think the company just was annoyed at him or whatever. They liked it being Sam or hungry. But his afternoon show was good. I mean him and Sharad and those guys they were having fun. So people didn't like it. They didn't like it. But he sounded like he was having fun. What got him fired? What happened? What the technical reason was. He had filmed Roland Campos or Booker taking a shit. Now I know Opie well. He filmed me doing it in 2009. But he was being a goofball. I don't think he was trying to be degrading. Just being an ass. And then showing it to I think a couple of the comics. And I guess I don't know exactly. I heard about it after the ball had already been rolling. So somehow Roland got nervous that he was going to release it. And maybe Opie was teased. I don't know what Rolbe said to him. I really don't. But I think that it got back to one of Roland's bosses. And then the head of the talent department spoke to him. And then once Human Resources got involved. Then things change. And I remember there was a clip of it was getting bad. And there was another producer in the studio named Paul. And he was videotaping it. And I think he had been on Roland's side. And he thought Opie was being a dick to him. He said, you're being a dick to me. And Opie was like, yeah, because you chose Roland in this whole thing. Like making it a public thing that was really uncomfortable. And then Paul goes, yeah, well I thought it was wrong. And then Sherrod goes like, ah, he was having fun. We all saw the tape. He was enjoying it. He was laughing. And when I heard that, I'm like, oh no. He just said we all saw the tape. Saw the tape. Like that just made it. And again, maybe they were going to fire him anyway. I don't know. Like they don't tell me that shit. But he thinks that the company was out to get him. I don't know. And again, I don't know what they said to him privately. But to me, he had two months left on his deal. And no company wants to fire you two months out. Because of the potential. Lawsuits. Lawsuits. They would much rather let you ride it out and then just not resign you. Well, Sirius is in a weird place because of podcasts. Yes. I mean, it's just in a very weird place. The idea of paying money for these talk shows that are going to get interrupted by commercials and to have to listen to them only when they come on and not have them on demand. It's such an inferior distribution method. Well, they're on demand. Like now they're on demand. On your phone? An hour after it's up, you can get it. An hour after it's up. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But live. You can listen live on the phone and get it on demand. But you can't. What I'm saying is on your radio. Like if you're in your car and you can't just pick, I want to listen to Tuesday's Opie and Anthony show. Or Jim Norton and Sam show. I can't just pick that. I don't know if you can unless you have a phone hooked. There might be a way to do it. That might be a phone hooked up. I think so, yeah. Right. But I don't think you could do that. Like Sirius Radio is only playing what's playing right now. I think so. But I could be wrong. I'm pretty sure it is on my car. You might be right. On my car. I mean, I don't have a thing where I could just pick an episode. How is a podcast played in a car? You just get, there's a bunch of different ways. One, you can do it where you can stream it live through YouTube. Some people do that and you just play the audio. And if you have it set up, you can play the video. Some people do it where you're on Stitcher. Stitcher is a low bit rate version, meaning the audio quality is not as good because it's compressed. But it's way quicker to download. So if you have some sort of a plan where you want to get less data per month, a lot of people use Stitcher. Or they just get it off of iTunes. But the thing about it is that if you have your phone Bluetooth up, literally all you have to do is press play and then immediately play whatever episode. You can scroll through our stuff. It works with Siri now too on the new operating system. I think you can just ask for it. Yeah, you can play it for Siri. But if you go through, do you use iTunes? I never look at podcasts standing. These are all the recent ones of all the ones that I subscribe to. I can just take one, click it, and boom, now it's playing. I mean, that's just incredible. It's done differently on Sirius. The app you have to use, but the on demand is pretty good. But I think it's an hour after an hour you can get it forever. I don't re-listen to the show. I mean, I never listen to our show. I listen to it on drives. They're like, wow, I kind of like it. It's new. We finally got Anthony back in the building. He's allowed to come on as a guest? In the building. I fought for three years for that. And literally right after he got fired, they let Anthony back in. After Opie got fired. Yeah, and I'm not saying Opie kept him out. I don't know. To be really honest, I don't know. I don't think that he actively kept him out. No. Do they know the real numbers? Like, do they ever tell you how many people are actually listening? Never. Never. I don't know if they know. I mean, I don't know how they would track that. They may. But they don't. And a part of me is like, I really want to know because it will give us negotiating power. And a part of me is like, I really don't want to know. But the fact that we're getting raises, I think we're doing okay. Like, that's the only way I can tell is that I know that they want to keep me every time the contract's okay. We must be doing okay. But no, I don't know what the numbers are. It's amazing how quickly it became a different thing. You know, like, I remember when Howard went to Sirius, it was like, wow, hallelujah. Finally, we're going to get uncensored radio. And then it became, well, it's still just radio. It's still live. And now you have to pay for it. Now it's 10 bucks a month. And I mean, he made out like a band. I mean, he made ridiculous sums of money from it. But where's the future in that? It just seems like that's a... It's almost like investing in... I mean, if you're someone who's got a piece of that, it's like, where's that going? You can't even use it in a tunnel. You know, the thing with Sirius, and this is scary for job security, but they're really... Scott is good at getting big name talent, like a Beatles channel and all this stuff. And they're good at getting good name, big name people doing shows. Craig Ferguson's on their channel. Craig's on our channel, yeah, on a faction. You guys are all on faction now? Faction Talk, yeah. I hate the name because it doesn't say comedy, but whatever it is, what it is. It's us, and then Camino and Rich, and then Ellis, and then Craig, and then Nick DiPaolo, who has a very funny show. He's hilarious. Nick is a fucking savagely funny guy. I love that guy. I do too. He's just a fucking raw, fucking bark out a joke funny guy. Nick is... Here's the thing about Nick. He's never afraid to try to be funny. Like, I've done a lot of projects with him. We did Tough Crowd for two years. I've just done a shitload of stuff. Back, back, back, back. Nick will fucking fire lines out. And I've always admired him for that because sometimes they work, sometimes they don't, but he's unafraid. He's a funny fucking dude, and he's unafraid to bark stuff out and be who he is. I love that. He does a great show. He's a really surprisingly good radio guy, like going to breaks and all that stuff. Well, he did it for a long time with Arty, remember? That's right. Yes, I was on that show. They can already show, but I remember watching the one blowout that they had, where Nick was trying to do some read that they had to do, and Arty just wanted to kind of fuck off. Yeah. You can't let it get to you like that. We've had the blowouts. I've been through them. I've seen them. Me and Ant never had one. I love Ant. I just wrote the forward to his book. I don't know if I'm supposed to say that, but too bad I'm proud of it. I fucking love him. And he's doing a show with Arty now, right? The AA show. The fucking greatest name. They had a great billboard for it, and it's really funny, man. Then you have to subscribe to listen to that? You do, to the compound, yeah. How much does that cost? I honestly don't know. I do pay for it, though. He offered me a free one, but I'm like, I'll chime it up. I mean, I'll fucking, I'll chip in. And it's doing well for him, that whole compound media. Oh, yeah. Yeah, he hasn't skipped a beat. His life is fucking doing great. Yeah, isn't that a great thing? Both are mugshots. They're real legit mugshots. That's hilarious. They did it, yeah. Compound media. I like how he called it compound media, too, because, oh, look at the AA show. A great poster. Coming September 5th. Now, can you get that on your phone? Oh, yeah. You can get it on an app. Yep, I have the Anthony Comey app. You can listen to it in the car. You can listen to it in the car. He's, but yeah, I love him, too. He's one of my favorite people ever. He's literally somebody who I don't think I'll ever not be close to. There's no one create, like I love Sam. I love all these guys I've worked with, but Anthony, there was a weird, it's a comic thing that happens when you're going back and forth with somebody that's in energy you're exchanging. And with him, dude, there are Jim Norton laugh compilations. I never listen to my own shit. I don't listen to the old show. I can't listen to it. But those I can listen to, because they're all Anthony just making me laugh. It's not me saying funny shit. It's Anthony saying funny shit that every time fucking gets me. He would literally make me laugh like that wheeze laugh that an audience member gets. I'm like, I never get to fucking feel that way. He's not even crazy. He's not a stand up. He's not a stand up. He's done it a little bit. But in that room, he tried it a couple of, like in Montreal a couple of years ago. Just to do it. After he'd been fired? Oh my God. No, no, this is what opening Anthony was supposed to do a show together to host a comedy show in Montreal. I was part of the show. But he went home for some reason. He flew home a day early. He didn't want to do it. So, Ant just did it by himself and hosted the show and started shitting on the comedians. And he was really funny. First time ever on stage, he was fucking funny. Wow. But in a comic room, Patrice said that about him. He said Anthony can access funny faster than any person I've ever seen. And Patrice didn't hand out. He was not known as the big. Oh boy, that guy doling out compliments again. That was not Patrice's reputation. But Anthony has that ability to reach in and grab funny from anywhere. And he's as fast as any comic we've ever had on. There's never been a comedian in there who was faster than him. They've been as fast as him. Guys like Patrice or Burr or Gene. But there's no one who's ever been able to go in there and run circles around Anthony. Right. It's staggering how fucking funny that guy is. Yeah, it is weird. It's like he's a comic who never became a comic. Like that's how I've always felt about being around him. Yeah. And even Dice said that about him. When Dice was shitting on Opie and Anthony when they had a feud together, he was saying that Anthony's actually talented. He's actually almost like a comic, but he never did it. He never did it. And Anthony has an ability. Brewer's an amazing storyteller too. An amazing storyteller. Whereas Ant could do that about it. He would talk about being a tin knocker and stuff I have no knowledge of or interest in. And he would have me on the edge of my seat listening to him talk about it. He just has a gift for explaining things and for walking you through it. Louis has that. The ability to explain in an amazingly interesting fashion. And Anthony can just jump in and out of voices and do impressions. I mean I never get sick of rambling about him because I got to work with him for a fucking decade. I got to work with the funniest guy in the fucking world for a decade. As much as it sucks that it's over, I'm grateful I had that. Would you want to do it again? 100%. I mean have you thought about doing that? I would love to do with him and Sam. I mean me and Opie don't get along anymore, but I would love to have Anthony with me and Sam. But again he's got his own show. It's not going to happen. But I love Sam and I have a very good chemistry and a comfort level. Like I like him and I trust him on the air. And with Opie it just got bad. I'm not blaming him. It's like hey I always have the problem too. But what about you doing a show with Anthony? Like a compound media show. You know compound media is again a more enclosed environment than Sirius is. And because of gigs and other things I got to promote I wanted to stay and also Sirius pays more. And I didn't want to negotiate against Anthony. I just couldn't. I wasn't going to use him as a negotiation tactic. I didn't want to do it. I couldn't do it. I'm too close to him. And I always kind of secretly wanted him to come back. And when he came back the first day he came back I mean I'm seeing that fucking. I got I got the we went to a Springsteen. No who played. Oh Guns N Roses played at the fucking the Apollo. So this was like right after Opie got fired. So I saw Scott Greenstein that night or Andrew and they're like yeah he can come in. Anthony came in. I'm like really? They're like yeah he can come in. I'm like great. I texted him come in tomorrow. The minute he could come in. But security hadn't been told. So I'm on the show and I know Ant's coming in. It's gonna be a fucking surprise for the audience. But he's being held up at security because in fairness they needed an email from Scott. They didn't know that had been OK. And it took about an hour 40 minutes but he got up and seeing him walk down that. Oh fuck it was so good. Look at him man. Yeah he was happy. You very rarely see that on his face. It was so good. But you just go right back into that. And Sam is so perfect in that moment too. You just kind of go back into it and you flow and you know. So I miss him a lot but.