Where did all the listeners go?

Howard Stern's audience didn't follow him to satellite radio. And no one seems to know where they went.

The self-proclaimed King of All Media once commanded a national audience of 12 million daily listeners before jumping to satellite in January. But since then, his kingdom has shrunk to a small fraction of that size. Meanwhile, the shock jock's main replacements thus far have failed to hold very much of the former flock.

According to industry analysts, the new Stern math scans something like this: At best, he took between 1 million and 2 million listeners with him, and his replacements, spread across many of the country's major radio markets, are drawing numbers in a similar range.

That leaves 8 million to 10 million nomadic listeners nationwide wandering the terrestrial radio dial in search of a new voice or sound to lead them out of the morning drive-time wilderness. Call them the Howard Stern diaspora, those legions unwilling to fork over satellite subscription fees and unimpressed by pretenders to the throne.

I guess Howard is funnier when he's free. I don't really understand talk radio. I can listen to maybe 20 minutes of Howard Stern before I have to turn the dial. Ditto for Rush Limbaugh. They can be amusing in extremely small doses. But I just don't wanna hear anyone yammer on for hours at a time. Except these guys, who are really kind of a guilty pleasure which I indulged in pretty regularly in New York--especially during baseball season. And I can't explain that either.

Via Lucianne.