Imagine this:
Howard Stern on 'American Idol'
Other shorts: Bikini Boy: 'Idol' audition was a radio hoax
By Louisa Ada Seltzer
Feb 5, 2010
Imagine this: Howard Stern on 'Idol'
Just imagine what Howard Stern would have said about "American Idol's" Bikini Girl. It doesn't seem like there's any way this could be true, but it's a delicious rumor, that Stern is atop the list of desired replacements for Cowell when he leaves the show at the end of the season. That's the word according to the New York Post's Page Six, which claims that "Idol" producers are "eager to hire Stern to replace Simon Cowell as the show's tough-talking judge." The gossip item claims that's what Stern was referring to a few days ago when he made a cryptic reference on his Sirius XM Radio show to being "approached by a major TV network to take over a TV show and leave here and do that next year." Page Six notes that "Idol," which offered Cowell $100 million a year to stay, could match Stern's current salary at Sirius XM, which is in the same range. However, it seems hard to imagine Fox would want to deal with all the headaches that would come with putting the notoriously raunchy host on broadcast TV, not after all the Federal Communications Commission run-ins Stern endured while on terrestrial radio. Stern's contract expires at the end of the year, and he has been making noise about moving back to terrestrial radio or finding a new gig all together.
Bikini Boy: 'Idol' audition was a radio hoax
Speaking of Bikini Girl, it looks as though Bikini Boy was just a hoax. Ty Hemmerling, a former employee of KWOF-FM in Denver, has 'fessed up that his "American Idol" audition, shown on Tuesday's show, was actually a stunt for the radio station, playing off the popularity of the so-called Bikini Girl on last year's edition. Hemmerling told Denver alternative paper Westword that "Idol" producers knew he was trying to pull something when they put him in front of the judges, and the cameras. "One of the first questions they asked me on the first day was if I worked for the media," he tells the paper. "And before I could even answer, they said, 'Don't lie, because we'll find out.' So I said, 'This is what I do.'" As for that bikini, it belongs to his girlfriend, and Hemmerling says he spent several days acclimating himself to its, ah, close confines before going to the audition. (It was held in the summer.) Hemmerling sang, not all that well, Billy Ray Cyrus' "Achy Breaky Heart," but his audition outlived his radio job with the Jesse & Shotgun morning show. The duo left the station late last year as part of a larger shakeup.
Viewers: We're rooting for the Saints this weekend
The Indianapolis Colts may be Las Vegas’ favorite to win this weekend’s Super Bowl, but more viewers will be cheering for the New Orleans Saints. That’s according to a Seton Hall Sports Poll among 1,063 randomly selected adults, 41 percent of whom said they’ll be rooting for the Saints in the big game. Thirty percent said they’d cheer for the Colts, while 28 percent said neither. That said, only 18 percent will cheer for the Saints because they’re actually a fan of the team; 46 percent want New Orleans to win because it’s the team’s first-ever trip to the Super Bowl, and 24 percent will do so out of sympathy for the city, which was torn up by Hurricane Katrina four years ago. Still, with two major sporting events right around the corner, the Super Bowl and the Winter Olympics, respondents appear to have their priorities in order. When asked which news stories they’re paying most attention to, 38 percent said the economy and 27 percent said health care, followed by the Super Bowl (20 percent) and the Olympics (7 percent). Eight percent said they didn’t know.
Controversial advertisers top pregame buzz
It turns out you don’t need to actually advertise on the Super Bowl to build buzz. Just ask Pepsi and ManCrunch.com. Pepsi, which will sit out the big game for the first time in 23 years, generated 21.6 percent of all online Super Bowl advertiser buzz volume between Dec. 1 and Jan. 31, according to Nielsen. Gay dating site ManCrunch.com, which had its ad rejected by Super Bowl broadcaster CBS, followed Pepsi with 6 percent of buzz volume. But in terms of buzz, both Pepsi and ManCrunch follow conservative organization Focus on the Family, which has generated 33.4 percent of Super Bowl advertiser buzz for its expected pro-life ad featuring college quarterback Tim Tebow and his mother. “Both the anti-abortion ad and the gay-themed ad have triggered significant levels of conversation. Other advertisers looking to drive buzz on top of their ads may need to work a bit harder to navigate around the controversial content,” Nielsen executive vice president of digital strategy Pete Blackshaw said in a release. Doritos (3.0 percent) and GoDaddy (2.5 percent) rounded out the top five buzz-building advertisers, according to the Nielsen study.
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