Howard Stern junkies finally got their fix today. Stern made his debut on Sirius Satellite Radio at 6am this morning, ending his month long absence from radio.

The show did have some problems. Technical difficulties forced Stern to play music for about 20 minutes.

While today’s show was ad-free, tomorrow won’t be. From now on, Sirius will be airing 6 minutes of advertising every hour on the Howard Stern Show. Advertisers include the Vermont Teddy Bear Company and Heineken.

Howard Stern also said that his new found freedom of speech on satellite radio will not mean he will be using lots of profanity. That’s funny because USA Today counted 172 swear words from 6am to 10am on his debut show.

Read more at:
USA Today(debut show)
MediaWeek(running ads)
USA Today(not much profanity)

Howard Stern is almost here. Monday morning at 6 am will be the debut of Howard on Sirius satellite radio on channel 100. How long will the show last? As long as Howard wants it to!

Are you ready?

You need a Sirius satellite receiver to listen to Stern. Check out some reviews of the most popular Sirius satellite radios:
Sirius Starmate Replay
Sirius S50
Sirius Sportster Replay

Sirius Radio’s sister station - Sirius Canada - will not be airing Howard Stern. It is not clear why he won’t be airing in Canada, but some believe it has to do with Canada’s CRTC(Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission) which is a lot like the United States’ FCC.

In 1997, The Howard Stern Show - then on regular radio - was taken off the Canadian airwaves due to indecency deemed by the Canadian Broadcasting Standards Council(part of CRTC.)

Full Story at Reuters

Sirius Radio will be launching a Playboy Radio Channel in early 2006. XM used to offer the Playboy channel as premium content but the contract expired last year after never having too much success on XM. Sirius will offer the channel at no additional cost to listeners but you will have to “opt-in” either over the phone or internet. The channel can also be blocked using parental controls.

Personalities from the Playboy Magazine and Playboy TV will all be apart of the show, even some of the Playboy Playmates and Hugh Hefner himself will be on the show. Hefner will do a morning show called “Ask Hef Anything.”

Full Story Here at MediaWeek

Motorola is about to unveil a new service called iRadio. The iRadio service will let users with a capable cell phone(read: newly bought after the iRadio service comes out) to download music on a pay-per-song basis. Users will have to download music from channels over high speed internet and transfer them to their cell phones. Once played, the song will be erased. Motorola also plans to have the new phone be able to hook up to car stereos through adapters.

The problem I see with this is the “once the song is played it is erased” deal. It is going to be such a hassle to use this service that it will probably flop unless they make some major changes to the time allowed for a song.

And am I the only one that is getting tired of every single gadget being combined into a cell phone? I don’t need a play station, mp3 player, electric razor, tv remote and toaster oven all combined into my cell phone. Just wireless voice communication. *End Rant*

Full Story Here at MarketWatch.com