NEW MORNING SHOW TO BE EXACTLY LIKE STERN SHOW ONLY WITHOUT STERN

Howard Stern’s announcement that he will depart terrestrial radio in January has left Viacom radio brass scrambling. “At first we weren’t quite sure what to do,” a source inside the company confessed. Initial suggestions were that the company transform itself into a more profitable Spanish language network. “It’s where the money is nowadays,” our source confirmed, “but there were people higher up in the company who adopted the attitude of ‘hey, I didn’t get into this business to develop radio for my gardener or my housekeeper.’ All you can really do in a situation like that is tell Les he’s right and go back to the drawing board.”

While Viacom has yet to officially announce its new broadcast strategy, our source confirms reports that the morning drive duty will be split between comedian Adam Carolla in several West Coast cities and former Van Halen frontman David Lee Roth in the East. Plans for Viacom-owned stations in the Midwest were less clear, however executives within the company have expressed optimism that a suitable on-air presence would emerge before January. “It’s the flyover—we’ll throw on some guy in a cowboy hat and play bluegrass…whatever,” a Viacom rep told trade pub Radio and Records earlier this month.

Although it is uncertain exactly what led to the decision to go with Roth and Carolla, media observers speculate that the most important factors were probably name recognition, a modicum of broadcast experience, and the fact that both men have “faces made for radio.” Our source refused to comment on reports that Roth was only offered the job after Viacom learned that former Poison drummer Rikki Rockett already had his own deal with Sirius and would be unavailable.

More recently executives have faced an even more daunting challenge, trying to determine the format of the new shows. “We want to hold onto Howard’s 18-49 demo so what you’re going to hear is going to be very Howardesque,” the source said, adding that the company was actively casting the roles of “overweight drunken sidekick”, “well-spoken but obstinate black woman”, and “mute who plays funny sounds” for both the Carolla and Roth shows.

“Howard doesn’t have the market cornered on naked chicks and midgets,” our source went on. “We’ve got a bit in the works where Dave is going to cover retards in Velcro and then hurl midgets at them. And Adam came up with the idea of an amputee picnic complete with a two-legged race and fast-pitch softball. You’re not gonna get that on satellite.”

One thing that will change, however, is the amount of time the two radio personalities will actually spend broadcasting. “We feel like we’ve gone a little light on Howard’s commercial load,” our Viacom operative tells us, noting that the company has set a new target of forty seven minutes per hour of sellable commercial time. “For Adam and Dave the show will play a little differently. Like sometimes we’ll just come back and play thirty seconds worth of fart sounds or whatever and then cut back to a break. And we’re toying with the idea of making the entire seven o’clock hour just ads. ‘Sales at seven’; we like that.”