A seemingly-panicked Howard Stern encouraged his employees to create fake Twitter accounts in a 2013 astroturfing effort to hype his satellite radio show to A-listers he wanted as guests, amid declining relevancy and cultural cache.
In the clip, the King of All Media, 70, directly encouraged staffers to pretend they were fans of the show in an effort to encourage pop superstar Lady Gaga to appear on the program as its relevancy diminished after seven years behind a paywall.
‘Set up a fake Twitter account, become 10 different people, I don’t give a s***,’ Stern told his underlings in a staff meeting he referred to as Revolution 2013.
‘I’m telling you, every celebrity reads their Twitter,’ the radio icon told his staffers as he painted a picture of the deceptive efforts he was implementing to make the show appear as relevant as it had been at its zenith in the 1990s and early 2000s.
He said that ‘every celebrity’ will start receiving ‘random things from’ employees pretending to be fans of the show, peppering the famous with lines such as – “Hey, when are you gonna do The Howard Stern Show? We want you on the show.’
Dailymail.com has reached out to Howard Stern’s rep Leslee Dart for comment.
Howard Stern encouraged his employees to create fake Twitter accounts in an astroturfing effort to hype his satellite radio show to A-listers he wanted as guests, amid declining relevancy and cultural cache
Stern, pictured in the home studio he’s been doing his show from since the coronavirus pandemic began, said he was ‘pissed’ that the audience was ‘forgetting about us’
Stern, who Forbes estimated took home $85 million in earnings at one point, took a ominous tone with his underlings as he urged them to take an aggressive approach toward recruiting A-list guests such as Brad Pitt and Tom Cruise.
Stern – who said he was ‘pissed’ that the audience was ‘forgetting about us’ – reminded them that a fading show would lead to jobs disappearing.
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The summit was one in a number of efforts Stern has made to clean up his show over the past 12 years to appeal to a wider audience.
His decision to stop ceased booking regular guest and shock comic Gilbert Gottfried – years before his death in April 2022 – highlighted the rashest of changes implemented by the radio staple after the show was reorganized by efficiency expert Marci Turk.
In the summit, a hostile Stern shuffled through an amateurish Power Point presentation, riddled with spelling and grammatical errors as he attempted to streamline the show’s complicated corporate organizational system.
Stern in the summit claimed credit for boosting the careers of stars such as Jerry Seinfeld, Jon Stewart, Whitney Cummings and Adam Levine by allowing them to appear on the show.
Stern said his show’s promotion of the Smashing Pumpkins’ 2012 album Oceania (after singer Billy Corgan appeared on the show on June 19 of that year) was the primary driver behind the album’s commercial success.
‘Billy Corgan’s album went into the top 10 – he was off the radar before us, you know this, this is fact,’ Stern said. ‘Billy Corgan was off the radar and he came on our show, and he sold albums.’
Efforts Stern has made to clean up his show were led by show exec and efficiency expert Marci Turk, pictured in 2014 in San Diego
Stern shunned regular guest Gilbert Gottfried years prior to his April 2022 death. In this May 2005 bit, the late comedic genius imitated old time comics such as Georgie Jessel and an aging Groucho Marx in a futile effort to amuse beloved fellow regular Lester ‘Beetlejuice’ Green
Turk took over in 2013 amid a bizarre all-hands staff meeting in which the radio host, seemingly panicked about his fading star, claimed credit for Billy Corgan’s success at the time
Dailymail.com has reached out to reps for Corgan for further comment on this story.
Stern in the summit encouraged staffers such as Richard Christy and Scott DePace to reach out to celebrities such as Brad Pitt and the late Rush Limbaugh in efforts to generate the kind of organic media attention it got throughout the 1990s and into the early 2000s.
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Stern told staffers he wanted them to ensure a steady flow of famous people through the studio, calling for a weekly A-list guest and two B-listers.
Tim Sabean, a veteran radio executive, ran the Howard 100 channels on SiriusXM from 2006 to around 2013.
He told Dailymail.com last month that Stern ‘allowed the wrong people to guide his brand and it’s a shame.’
Stern in the meeting also laid out a new dress code, comparing his staffers to ‘homeless people’ and ‘bums’ who were scaring off celebrities and their publicists.
‘We finally get the artist up here, and they walk into the f***ing radio station, and we look like … zombies from Walking Dead,’ Stern, wearing a luxurious scarf by designer John Varvatos, told his employees.
‘We look like a college radio station, we look like we have homeless people working here, and I gotta tell you something, it’s off-putting and scary.’
Stern claimed credit for the Smashing Pumpkins commercial success with their 2012 album Oceania after singer Billy Corgan appeared on the show on June 19 of that year
Admitting that the public was ‘forgetting’ about the show – years after popular comics Jackie Martling and Artie Lange departed – Stern asked his employees to create fake Twitter accounts in an effort to portray the program as being culturally relevant in 2013
‘Stuttering’ John Melendez, pictured with Stern Show producer Gary Dell’Abate in the 1990s, worked on The Howard Stern Show from 1988 until 2004
Melendez told Dailymail.com that Stern’s request his underlings spam celebrity Twitter pages under fake aliases amounts to ‘a scar in his career’
‘Stuttering’ John Melendez, who worked on The Howard Stern Show from 1988 until leaving in 2004 for The Tonight Show with Jay Leno, said that Stern’s request his underlings spam celebrity Twitter pages under fake aliases amounts to ‘a scar in his career.’
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‘Howard asking people to make fake Twitter accounts is the most embarrassing thing in his career,’ Melendez told Dailymail.com. ‘Here’s a guy we all thought was about reality, here’s a guy that was supposed to be real and now he’s telling people to make fake Twitter accounts so he can get better guests?’
Melendez, best known for peppering celebrities with humiliating and personal questions at red carpet events, said he was fond of Stern on a personal level, but bewildered the legendary media personality would take such a tack in his career.
‘It’s an embarrassment – and I love Howard – but it’s an embarrassment he should be ashamed to even do that,’ said Melendez.
The former Tonight Show announcer made unlikely political headlines in 2018 with a prank call to President Donald Trump that went viral after Dailymail.com was first to publish the shocking story.
Monique is the administrator of a Stern-themed message board under the Radio Gunk brand.
She told Dailymail.com she felt the summit amounted to ‘an act of desperation’ after Stern realized he ‘had hired a bunch of borderline whack-packers as employees on the show.’
Monique added that many working under the Howard Stern brand were in their first jobs, or had gotten their foot in the door via internships, and were inexperienced with the corporate values Stern was gradually embracing for his show.
The Hamptons staple also told staffers he wanted them to ensure a steady flow of famous people through the studio, calling for a weekly A-list guest and two B-listers
An X/Twitter user under the handle @bringbackjackie , who live blogs The Howard Stern Show as it airs, compared Stern to Hilaria Baldwin in reference to the summit. Howard Stern, Beth Stern, Hilaria and Alec Baldwin and Howie Mandel pictured in 2014 in NYC
Stern pictured at the height of his influence in 1995 in NYC alongside cohost Robin Quivers
‘You have a bunch of porn-watching, fart-joking, overweight white men wearing ripped jeans and tee shirts to the workplace,’ Monique said.
She added, ‘Howard then goes on like Kimmel and sees that everyone is dressed nicely, looks pulled together and actually knows what they are doing.’
An X/Twitter user under the handle @bringbackjackie, who live blogs The Howard Stern Show as it airs, compared Stern to his Hamptons neighbor Hilaria Baldwin in reference to the summit.
‘The whole summit tape really should have been Stern’s “How you say this in English? Cucumber?” moment,’ @bringbackjackie said, ‘where if Howard had an ounce of shame, he would have slinked away to the Hamptons and joined Hilaria in forever avoiding the public eye.’
He told Dailymail.com of Howard and Hilaria: ‘But both are sad, delusional narcissists and the concept of shame doesn’t exist for them.
@bringbackjackie continued, ‘More interesting than the fake Twitter accounts, to me, was Stern’s lazy, moronic thinking that since Richard Christy grew up in Kansas …
‘And Brad Pitt grew up in Kansas, a letter from Christy to Pitt mentioning their shared Kansas upbringing might be well be the ticket to getting Pitt on the Stern Show.
The blogger said that the ‘stupidity [Stern] displayed there’ was staggering.’
The Howard Stern Show airs on SiriusXM Monday thru Wednesday.