Friday, April 21, 2006

David Lee Roth Gets Boot Off Radio; Opie & Anthony Step In

One of the would-be successors to Howard Stern, David Lee Roth got fired and will be replaced in the seven markets he aired by Opie & Anthony. Those guys of course got in trouble for their on-air antics, finding a welcome refuge at XM. So Stern goes to Sirius, Opie & Anthony go from XM to regular radio (keeping their satellite radio gig by the way) and Roth might very well go to Sirius himself. I'm not sure why XM would let them do three hours a day in major markets since XM presumably wants them as part of the programming you can't get anywhere else a la HBO. But I do know Stern has been a remarkable success. Sirius has rapidly closed the gap in subscribers and traffic to its website is much higher than XM's. By December 2007, Sirius will be the dominant satellite radio company and maybe then they can merge so no one will have to choose.

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