Sterntastic— Five More Years

The long-awaited announcement hit: Howard Stern to stay with SiriusXM through this time in 2020. He re-signed for five years, and came fully loaded, as you can see in the video.

Leading up to today it was anybody’s call. Will he re-sign? If not, where would he go? If he stayed, how long? It was conjecture junction. My guess was 70% he’d stay, and maybe three years, tops. I was actually surprised to hear it’s for another full five years. This would make his reign at Sirius lasting fifteen years through the end of 2020.

But I have to say— the last couple years, to me, it was really looking like he was winding down for the end of his time at Sirius. Two years ago, this month, they 86’d the HowardTV platform, which was a continuance of the E! platform they had back at K-ROCK. Then some people left— including most noticeably Lisa G earlier this year. It was never said what happened with her departure except that Howard made a brief blip on the air that she was no longer there, and Lisa’s been very mum about it— refusing to answer queries through her Facebook & Twitter. She actually doesn’t respond to anyone, really, about anything. She just posts her pictures and videos, and it’s been great to see her doing her thing, but I think she was a nice asset to the show and it sucked to see her go.

According to USA Today, Sirius stock rose today 3% after Stern’s announcement.

One thing I was happy hear, and see with today’s video, is that they’ll be bringing back the video portion of the show. The E! show was good, but very watered down due to it being a television show, but HowardTV was phenomenal. It was uncut and uncensored and it was a big shock that they shut it down two years ago. It was said at the time that Howard was exploring options to put HowardTV on another platform, but that never happened. So since then we’ve settled for the on-again, off-again watching on YouTube. I say on/off because there’s been fits and starts at times where HowardTV (though defunct) had filed DMCA take-down requests to remove them off YouTube. For a while content was dry, but then people started uploading them again. Some were uploaded so much (ie: people downloading other folk’s videos off their channels, etc) that the degradation quality was so apparent on some. Essentially a handful of people had originally ripped the clips off their DVR’s and uploaded them. I had HowardTV (back when I still had cable), and they were the greatest when you caught them off your television set.

I’m not too jazzed about the idea of an app, because I’m hoping it won’t be the only way to see Stern-streamed content. Apparently in addition to the show being streamed, like the old days, they’ll also be making available all the old radio and video segments.

So you know what this means… watch all you can on YouTube for right now. Because you know they’re all comin’ down.

Firehouse • 75827

Found a nice surprise this morning on the web. My favorite franchise of all time, Ghostbusters, now has it’s own Lego set. It will come in a whopping assortment of 4,634 pieces that includes nine minifigures: Peter Venkman, Raymond Stantz, Egon Spengler, Winston Zeddemore, Janine Melnitz, Dana Barrett, Louis Tully, Library Ghost and Zombie Driver. Named Firehouse Headquarters, it will be an open-up, two-story firehouse with a laboratory, living quarters, containment unit and other rooms. It also includes ghost minifigures as well— including the famous Slimer. Once assembled it will measure 14” high, 9” wide and 14” deep.

Noticeably missing from this set is their trademarked vehicle— that’s because there is already an existing Ecto-1 Lego, and according to Collider it will fit into the Firehouse set.

The Firehouse Headquarters will be available after the new year in January, and is set to retail at $350.00. Over on their Facebook page, Lego has amassed an album of twenty-seven pictures of this new set.

Once this becomes available, I assume it’ll sell pretty fast. So on that note, you better…

And…they’re GONE!

As I wrote back here, about getting your own copy of the commemorative October 22, 2015 front page of USA Today, I’ve just learned tonight that they are sold out. According to The Hollywood Reporter they sold about 17,000 online. No word if it’ll be available later for on-demand ordering.

Great Scott IV

Click to enlarge

October 22nd— not the 21st— is the famous date for the coveted front page from Back to the Future II. As mentioned prior, USA Today made available in this morning’s paper the almost-exact cover from II; (some changes were made like removing the Queen Diana visiting America reference since she had died back in 1997).

It is 99% spot-on with the cover seen in the film, and only the Youth Jailed cover is available— not the secondary Gang Jailed headline. It is interesting to note that in fact USA Today is who created and printed the original newspapers back in 1989, and they only arrived on set minutes before they would be utilized in their introduction by Doc Brown.

Like the Pepsi Perfect debacle, there is legitimate concern about the widespread availability of today’s paper. In my area the only place that primarily carries USA Today are the vast number of 7-Eleven stores. There’s 3 within a 2 mile radius of my home. They arrive to their stores around 5am, and I got up around 6:30 and went to my nearest one and found that there was only two copies left. I previously had planned to buy two, but I wasn’t going to be THAT GUY, aka a schnorrer, who’d take the last copies. One of my dear, longtime friends out in Riverside County got to her local 7-Eleven only to find that the three copies she was going to get only ended up being the single, last one!

But do not despair and do not be suckered by the eBay auctions— because USA Today is directly selling the covers online from their own website for $4.95!