NEW YORK — Shortly after making his entrance, Oscar winner Jamie Foxx found model Janice Dickinson and her ample cleavage pressed tightly against him.

Then Foxx posed for a photo-op with hip-hop legend Grandmaster Flash, and later traded handshakes and hugs with New York Giants linebacker LaVar Arrington.

The VIP lounge at Lotus? The red carpet at the Grammys?

Try the star-studded offices of Sirius Satellite Radio, a haven for bold-faced names found 36 floors above Manhattan in a Rockefeller Center skyscraper.

The company headquarters draws an eclectic collection of celebrities, sports stars, musicians and Martha Stewart, often simultaneously, with many wandering casually through the halls on their way to or from a studio.

The diversity of talent is best summed up this way: Howard Stern and Cardinal Edward Egan do their shows a few hundred feet apart.

Only here could "The King of All Media" and a prince of the church cross paths — uncensored, of course.

"You walk through the halls here, and it's absolutely mind-blowing," Stern said. "There's energy, and there's synergy. You walk out after a show and wind up hanging out. ... It's like a big old kibbutz."

A somewhat typical morning found Foxx announcing his new Sirius channel as singer Evan Dando performed live in a nearby studio.

National Football League All-Pro Tiki Barber fielded questions for the NFL Network.

Not far away, Candace Bushnell of "Sex and the City" fame quizzed Dickinson.

At the end of a hallway, Stewart's daughter Alexis sat on the floor, kicking around ideas for her upcoming program. And Sean Avery of the Los Angeles Kings took advantage of the National Hockey League All-Star break to do an interview in yet another studio.

"It's neat — it's a mosh pit, a melting pot, and we're all here doing the same thing," says Barber, the recently retired Giants star who co-hosts a Sirius show with twin brother Ronde.

Sirius offers more than 130 channels, including 69 music channels and 65 channels of sports, news and talk — and is fighting for subscribers with XM Satellite Radio, which features its own star-studded lineup.

XM features Oprah Winfrey's channel, Bob Dylan's "Theme Time Radio Hour," major league baseball and "The Ellen DeGeneres Show."

Although Sirius features the NFL, the NBA and CNN, its main attraction remains Stern, who joined the satellite world in January 2006 and now runs a pair of stations for the company.

One year after Stern's arrival, Sirius boasts a little more than 6 million subscribers — XM has
7.6 million — far beyond projections by Wall Street analysts of 3.5 million by the end of 2006.

But Stern says his move to satellite also invigorated his show (although perhaps not as much as his wallet).

Stern producer Gary Dell'Abate offered an example of how things work at Sirius: Richard Simmons, who does his own show, showed up in studio to end a long-running feud with Howard.

The Stern show even landed one big guest found just walking around the floor: Smokey Robinson, who stuck around for a 20-minute stint.

"The cool thing is running into people in the building," Dell'Abate says. "And there's always people in the building."

It's true. JD Williams, who played the doomed character Bodie on HBO's "The Wire," strolls through the halls almost unnoticed shortly after Foxx departed.

The white hallways are scrawled with signatures written in black markers by guests from the various programs, with plenty of musical acts represented: the Beach Boys, Alice Cooper, the Raveonettes. The scrawl fits in with the loose atmosphere, where the stars are so ubiquitous they can almost feel anonymous.

By afternoon, renowned disc jockey "Cousin Brucie" Morrow is preparing for his show. Down the hall, so is former presidential candidate Bill Bradley.

Morrow raves about the buzz around the floor, comparing it to the Brill Building — the home of songwriting giants Burt Bacharach, Carole King, Neil Sedaka and others in the early 1960s.

"I never thought I would hug and kiss Martha Stewart," Morrow says. "You have personality here in the hallways."

Bradley, whose program is "American Voices," has his own list of random get-togethers. The former three-term U.S. senator from New Jersey brought musicians Bette Midler, Bonnie Raitt and Max Weinberg on his show after meeting them in the building.

Stern says he was invited to appear on the Catholic Channel — and he might do it.

"It could be kind of cool," he says.

Change is in the air, locally.

For starters, former WNYW/Ch. 5 correspondent Penny Crone has left Howard Stern's "Howard 100 News" on Sirius Satellite Radio because of budget cuts, according to sources. George Flowers has also departed.

Also at WNYW/Ch. 5, sportscaster John Discepolo has left the station, as of Tuesday. His contract had expired and was not renewed.

Reischea Canidate will sub for Decepolo until a replacement is named.

And finally, Sree Sreenivasan has joined WNBC/Ch. 4 as the station's technology reporter. He was last seen on WABC/Ch. 7. He'll report on air and online, plus he will lead a number of new media initiatives at Ch. 4.

http://www.nydailynews.com/entertainment/ent_radio/story/489257p-412048c.html

October 9, 2006

Howard Stern is set to launch a new campaign promoting his video-on-demand Howard TV service. According to the New York Daily News, a series of ads for the In Demand channel will appear in men's magazines, Web sites and NYC taxis promoting the service and a "free" trial weekend set for November 3 to 5.

The trial weekend will actually cost a penny, as a precaution to prevent younger viewers from simply tuning in. In Demand CEO Robert Jacobson told the Daily News that the company is putting over $1 million into the ad campaign, which is designed to bring in new subscribers to the video service. Jacobson says that the current number of Howard TV subscribers "has exceeded our expectations" and says that the majority of those watching the on-demand service are also Sirius subscribers.

Getting Sirius: Howard Stern and the magic number
October 4, 2006 8:29 AM PDT
Five million subs and counting. But what's the magic number?

Sirius just released its third-quarter subscriber data: more than 5.1 million subscribers. That more than doubles the 2.2 million subscribers Sirius reported a year ago. Sirius claims it's out-grown competitor XM Satellite Radio for four straight quarters.

It was about two years ago that Howard Stern and Sirius announced their deal. Recently I blogged about Stern's lower ad rates on sat radio compared with his old terrestrial radio net. As several readers pointed out, that's only part of the formula.

Sirius currently charges $12.95 a month for a subscription. So every thousand subs means another $155,400 in revenue for Sirius. As cable TV does, sat radio gets two major revenue streams: subs and ads.

So what's the magic number? When does Howard Stern become a profitmaker for Sirius? We may have passed that number some time ago. Stern and his production staff reportedly cost Sirius $100 million a year. That's roughly the income from 644,000 subs at the current monthly rate.

And Sirius may be expanding beyond an audience that's largely been limited to in-car use. Just last week a Wi-Fi equipped radio launched for Sirius subscribers.

Finally, Sirius is confident it'll have 6.3 million subs by the end of this year.

Dude,

That jackie Joke-hunt ( har har har ) show Blows ... much rather hear the wrap up show or the replay. Maybe there could be a link to howard 100 where we can hear the wrap-up show or the replay for those who think jackie's jokes are like nails on a chalkboard.