Sirius Canada - Howard Stern

Howard Stern

On September 2, 1997, Canadian radio stations Q107 (Toronto) and CHOM (Montreal) began airing the Howard Stern Show. That day, Stern called the French "peckerheads" and said that "the French should bend over for me the way they did for Hitler". That broadcast, and others, led to thousands of complaints to the Canadian Broadcast Standards Council. As a result of the complaints Q107 continued to air the Stern show but with an eight-minute tape delay and some bleeping. CHOM stopped airing Stern in August 1998, and Q107 did the same in November 2001. Corus Entertainment's newly appointed program director John Hayes dropped Stern because he wanted to return Q107 to an all music, classic rock format. It was also problematic that Stern had been available since early 2001 on WBUF, Buffalo without the twenty minute delay or onerous editing that was taking place on Q107. Stern later announced his move to Sirius, effective January 2006, as the U. S. Federal Communications Commission has no jurisdiction over content on subscription-based services such as cable television or satellite radio. However, the CRTC has always held content jurisdiction over content on cable services and is apparently able to regulate satellite radio content as well.

Sirius Canada's licence decision made no explicit reference to Stern but does obligate the company to maintain the same standards (i.e. the CAB's Sex-role Portrayal Code) as for conventional stations. The decision also recognizes Sirius's ability to air "adult" programming in separate packages, but even these must comply with the Code. (By way of comparison, even adult content from Canadian pay-per-view providers is subject to review prior to broadcast, to ensure compliance with the Code.)

Sirius Canada later announced that Howard Stern's two channels, Howard 100 and Howard 101, would not be available to its Canadian customers. Naturally this has generated negative response from Canadian fans of Stern, some of whom have claimed that they would not subscribe to any service absent the two Stern channels. According to Gary Slaight, CEO of Standard Broadcasting:

Nonetheless, pressure from fans, many of whom were reportedly continuing to purchase grey-market American Sirius receivers, continued to build. For instance, Josef Radomski, a Canadian writer, announced on the January 11, 2006 Howard Stern Show that he had started an online petition to bring Stern to Sirius Canada.

However, the CRTC had not in fact banned Stern's broadcast in Canada — Sirius Canada instead chose not to risk provoking an issue with the broadcast regulator. Nonetheless, there is some ambiguity in the licence conditions. Some media commentators suggested that Sirius Canada's reluctance to carry Stern had less to do with regulatory concerns and more to do with unwillingness to pay the American company's syndication fees for the program. Others might argue that Sirius Canada was simply trying to avoid the public relations and regulatory battle that would likely follow if it decided to carry Stern.

When Sirius Canada finally announced on February 1, 2006 — three months after the Canadian service's launch — that the Howard 100 channel would be made available to all subscribers effective February 6, the announcement was covered by most media outlets but did not generate any significant backlash.

In May 2006, Sirius Canada announced that it would add Howard 101 to its lineup. The channel was made available to listeners on June 19, 2006 as part of a 10-channel addition to Sirius Canada's channel lineup.