Joe Rogan on How Howard Stern Paved the Way

So wait, so it was on that all talk radio, was that the guy who would, what was his name, who would, he would do all the voices, he would do all the characters? No, he was on it too though. Phil Hendry. Phil Hendry. The great Phil Hendry. He would, and he still does it, if you've never heard Phil Hendry, he's a goddamn genius. Yeah. Phil Hendry would answer the phone and then he would be the caller. So he would call up with these ridiculous, he would say ridiculous shit. Yeah. Where you're like, how can this guy be real if people would get so angry? And then other people would call in. Like, that man is so ignorant. And then he would, and he would say, no man, I mean, you are ignorant. He'd get a bite slip up. I am standing here in front of the Journal of American Medicine and he would just go on these, and most people were in on the gag. Yeah. Right. And I would be like 60% of the people in on the gag. Yeah. It was great. It was so good. I remember being parked in front of my house, like listening to it like, what the fuck, man? What's he doing? I know. He was amazing. Yeah, he's still around. Yeah, I think he is. I think you're right. What does he do these days? Does he have a radio show? He's probably working with Phil Hendry. He's probably working with Uncle Floyd. Phil Hendry show. The Phil Hendry show. Is it on the radio? The YouTubes. The official HQ for Sat through todays show. It's about iTunes. I feel about. Sounds loud. When I hear about, okay, that's good. Because when I hear people are still doing radio radio, I'm like, oof. Do you have any other options? Is there other way? Can you get out? I'm on SiriusXM right now. That's different. That's different. Oh, you mean like, give me terrestrial. Yeah, like radio. Like over the air radio. Yeah, I know. But you know what? There is something. Like I've been, I was in a couple towns, Columbus, Ohio, Denver even, where they have a strong terrestrial radio thing. Mm-hmm. Station that's popular. Austin does. Austin still does. Dudley and Bob. It's such a cool thing. And we've kind of lost something. Like, because they're talking about the show that's coming to our town. It creates a sense of community that you don't have and other things. Right. And it's live. Yeah. It's happening over the air. Tools coming in this weekend. We're going to do, we'll be there. But it's also censored. That's a real issue. Yeah, for sure. I mean, look, one thing that we all owe Howard Stern, a huge debt of gratitude, is that he was sued by the FCC. Yeah. I mean, he- Like legit. Yeah. Yeah. He was sued. He lost a shitload of money. Mm-hmm. The media company, what was the company that had his show? Whatever the company was. Yeah. And they were fined hundreds of thousands of dollars. Right. For him, like for almost nothing. This was during the Bush administration. They were going after him. Do you remember that? Yeah, I remember it. Dude, they went after him. They went after him hard to the point where it was scary. Yeah. Where like you would hear about it and you're like, what? Yeah. What? And you would hear about the things that he got fined. See if you can find the things that Howard Stern got- The top five things he got fined for. Yeah, let's pull that up. Oh, really? Because listen, man, whatever anybody wants to say about Howard Stern, that motherfucker opened the door for all of us. All of us. For me, 100%. Yeah. Okay, let me see. It's like the first thing is the fart man's done. Wait, he got fined for that on television? Fine for fart man. That was on television. Because he showed his ass? Um, okay. It's not really surprised that he exposed his butt cheeks into $10,000 gold spandex superhero costume, blah, blah, blah. Where does it say he got fined? Number two. Where does it say he got fined for that? Mm-hmm. I guess it just says, I don't know. It said, oh, most outrageous offenses, I guess. Oh, outrageous offenses. Yeah. Sorry, hold on. He was- Aunt Jemima joke I saw. Yeah. Well, there was a lot of stuff that he said, you know, that you would look at it today, like in terms of like a podcast, you would say, oh, that's not even- That's outrageous. Right. That's outrageous. So here's the things that he got fined for. Let's make that, look at the fucking numbers, man. August 12, 1993, $500,000. Infinity Broadcast Network gets fined. Oh, right, infinity. $100,000 and $500,000. $600,000 December 18th, 1992, and then August 12, 1993, $500,000. So within a year, six months time even. Look, 90 to 2004. Look at that. In one year's time, six months time, they got fired $1,100,000. Jeez Louise. Fucking insane, man. Wow. I wonder what the offenses were. It's fucking crazy. Is this language mostly language? I'm sure it's language or subject matter, potty humor, you know, fuck man. It's crazy. I mean, we think about this today in terms of like what we get away with on podcasts. Oh, God. Oh, my God. Total freedom. Total freedom. And I think a lot of that was open, that door was open because of Howard Stern. What does it say to that? It says, playing the piano with his penis. She recorded the, let me read this. WJK, JFK FM in Washington DC became the third Infinity Station to air the Howard Stern show in 1988. Two months later, Ann Stalmel of New Jersey mistakenly tuned her radio to hear Stern talk about having naked women in for an upcoming show. She recorded the, oh, that's a fucking snitch. She recorded the Christmas party broadcast in December 16th that featured a man playing the piano with his penis, acquires singing about gay sex to the tune of White Christmas and women being hypnotized to achieve orgasm. Under the referral of her senator, this fucking crazy lady called the senator and congressman, Stalmel filed a complaint with transcripts and a tape of the program. And the FCC reviewed the evidence and asked Infinity in October 1989 for an explanation as the material in quotes may have violated federal law by including indecent programming during daytime hours. Isn't that funny? Like at nighttime, it's okay to get naughty. Carmazin argued that the term patently offensive in its new ruling was vague and the sexual references cited were no more offensive than daytime television shows Geraldo and Donahue which used similar terms without repercussions. His response was later rejected, FCC. So they started finding them back then in 88. I would imagine that for terrestrial radio, a lot of that still holds, right? I bet you could get away with a lot more now. And because of him, because of Howard Stern, because of all the, I mean, look, and he was under the gun, man, and he stuck to his guns. He kept doing the same program. I mean, it's a vastly different program now, and people criticize him because of that, but look, he's a different person. You shouldn't have to do that old show. He should do whatever he wants. That's who he is now. Right, exactly. You know? But I work for NPR, do this live from here, which was Prairie Home Companion, and I do this thing on that show. And they have comedians on once in a while, and they have musicians. And they are really strict. When a comic is about to go out there, he's told 20 times what he can and can't say. It's like really, really, really strict. And if you violate it, if you say the wrong thing, they get a fine for every station that it airs on throughout the network. Oh, Jesus. Yeah. So they have 100 stations, there's 100 finds. Yes, exactly. And that is, it's still really serious. And that's- Censorship. Six o'clock in the evening in the East Coast. It's so ridiculous. Look, I get it if you have a program, and it's a rated PG program, and this is the way you want it because it's for kids and it's for families and stuff like that. But for the government to step in, it's ridiculous. Yeah. It really is ridiculous. And the fact that this was, you know, that people had to endure this for so long. Right. Before Howard Stern, people have to realize there was no one. There was no one like that. There was Don Imus, who was kind of controversial in some ways. Yeah, he was. And then Stern, who is just a totally different animal. Yeah. He opened the door for podcasts, for sure. Yeah. All these outrageous people doing podcasts, he made the roadmap. Right. Yeah. 100%. Well, it shows you can come over to this side of the street and no one's going to mess with you. Yeah.