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"I've never met anybody who said when they were a kid, 'I wanna grow up and be a critic.'"-Richard Pryor, The Guardian Unlimited, August 9, 2004.

Howard Stern may not be getting rave reviews on Sirius, but then again, reviews have never really impacted Stern's success. From the start he has been getting bad reviews, and those criticisms have not changed over time. Any Stern fan can tell you they've heard that he's washed up, he's not funny anymore, he only relies on shocking his audience, he has to be rebelling against somebody or something to be edgy, he's too vulgar to listen to, or somebody else more shocking than him is stealing his thunder. Despite all of these same rehashed criticisms, Stern's success has grown over the past couple of decades. The fame hasn't gone awa

The only new criticism that's come about is that he's making his audience pay to listen, but this does not take into account the rest of the Sirius product. You know, the 180 other channels that come with Sirius which are also great in their own right. Even if someone is paying strictly for Stern, his show is now better than ever because he is free of creative constraints. At the moment his drive time radio program is better, and longer in length than anyone else's.

Stern runs a comedy program, which people try to read into way too much. With comedy you either understand a person's brand of humor or you don't. The people that don't understand his brand of comedy are the same people who continually predict his failure and doom. Anyone who doubts his popularity needs only to look at the recent publicity surrounding his engagement or the success of the "Vote for Sanjaya" movement which his show has championed. The bottom line is that his fans are what makes him popular, not his critics.

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