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American Morning

Howard Stern Signs Off From Airwaves of Free Radio; Interview with Arlo Guthrie

Aired December 16, 2005 - 09:34   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

MILES O'BRIEN, CNN ANCHOR: Love him or hate him. You know who he is. Howard Stern is who we're talking about today. He signs off from the airwaves of free radio, and next stop, satellite.
CNN entertainment correspondent Sibila Vargas takes a look.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: What does it feel like to wear a dress, Howard?

SIBILA VARGAS, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Nearly 30 years of stunts, characters and controversy. It made Howard Stern one of the country's most popular and controversial radio personalities, and he's more than willing to remind you.

STERN: Should the American public bow to me, accept me, cater to me? Well, what else can they do? Accept the fact that I am the greatest entertainer of the millennium.

VARGAS: The self-proclaimed king of all media has found a new medium -- satellite radio.

A stripper on Howard's Web site welcome fans to his new home at Sirius Satellite Studios, where he begins broadcasting January 9th.

The entertainer, who broadcasts his nationally syndicated number- one rated show from New York's KROC, will receive a package from Sirius valued at about $100 million a year for five years.

DEVIN LEONARD, "FORTUNE" MEDIA COLUMNIST: Well, what Sirius is doing, it's a bet that they can get a million new subscribers through the Stern signing, and if they do that, they say they'll break even.

STERN: Down with the FCC.

VARGAS: After repeated fines from the FCC and problems with owned-and-operated stations that broadcast him on traditional, or terrestrial radio, Stern will be without any censors on the subscription-based satellite.

ADAM ROGERS, "WIRED" MAGAZINE: Howard Stern is funny because of transgression, right? Howard Stern is funny because he's doing stuff he's not supposed to be doing. Now he gets to do whatever he wants.

VARGAS: Subscribers have to pay $12.95 a month for the service, not including the cost of the actual radio receiver, a concept that may still be new to traditional radio listeners, but Sirius is betting that Stern will bring Satellite mainstream.

ROGERS: If you lure arguably one of the biggest celebrities in the country, certainly one of the best-known radio personality, to your radio network, that seems like a good thing to do, if you've got the money to do it. I've never been a huge fan, but I know people who are, and they are thinking about getting Sirius.

VARGAS: If Howard's legion of fans follow, Sirius is also betting that satellite radio could finally live up to its promise to become radio's next revolution.

Sibila Vargas, CNN, New York.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

M. O'BRIEN: Howard Stern's signs off from his New York studio in about 30 minutes, and after that, it's a parade through Manhattan to a "welcome satellite radio" concert hosted by Martha Stewart. There you have it. That's your...

S. O'BRIEN: Under the strange bedfellows category for sure.

M. O'BRIEN: You would say that.

S. O'BRIEN: But I'm sure it will be a wonderful parade today in the rain, and the possibility of a transit strike, and the holiday shopping. It will be just delightful.

You've heard about the lucky seven, this group last month, seven coworkers in California, they won a total of $315 million in the lottery jackpot. There's a picture of the group. They were hit, though, with a lawsuit by a coworker who was off on that lucky day. He says, I was always part of the pool, and he wants a cut.

Joining us this morning from Irvine, California is Jennifer Habib, member of the lucky seven team.

Hey, Jennifer, good morning to you. Thanks for talking with us this morning.

JENNIFER HABIB: Thank you. Good morning. How are you?

S. O'BRIEN: I'm doing all right. How are you?

HABIB: I'm OK.

S. O'BRIEN: I mean, how does it feel to have a co-worker --I mean, everything was happy, happy, joy, joy, and then suddenly it's, oh, and by the way, you're being sued.

HABIB: Quite a surprise. We had no idea that was going to happen, and all of us are blown away by his attitude and his actions.

S. O'BRIEN: Tell me about the co-worker? Had he always been part of the lottery pool that you guys did.

HABIB: No, he hasn't. That, too, came as a big surprise. I don't know where he came up with that. His name is Jonathan De La Cruz, and he's a lab technician, and the claim was essentially that -- you know, I'll sort of paraphrase it for you -- he'd always been part of the pool, and when he was part of the pool you guys didn't win, you know, you know, made him pay up anyway, so when you won, you guys should pay him. What's wrong with his argument?

HABIB: Well, I never saw any money change hands between him or any of the other of my co-workers, so he he paid, I don't know. It's beyond me. And again, I don't know where he's coming up with that claim.

S. O'BRIEN: How did you keep track? We do a pool here ourselves, and we make sure we have this list that we keep track of, of who's put and in, and sometimes if Miles put in. And sometimes if Miles is traveliong, I put for him. If I'm traveling, he puts in for me. How did you guys work it?

HABIB: That's pretty much how we did. One of us would always put in for the other if they were on vacation or not scheduled that day, because all of us in that lab worked part-time.

S. O'BRIEN: I see. And was there ever anybody who was assigned to putting in for him? I mean, does he have any kind of argument that he was overlooked on this particular day?

HABIB: Not any one person in particular. Whoever bought the tickets, he would have notified them beforehand, which he never did to my knowledge, because there was never any money exchanged, and we kept the list of who put in money on the outside of an envelope, and we also kept some of the paperwork regarding that also.

S. O'BRIEN: Do you feel like legally you're in the clear?

HABIB: I don't feel he has a strong case.

S. O'BRIEN: How has all of this been, now that some time has passed since the victory and everybody's excited at first. Tell me what it's like when reality kind of sets in. I mean, is this just one of a number of disappointments, people looking at you as a, you know, moneybags and suing you because they can get...

HABIB: Right. That's exactly it. I feel like a target and I think we all feel that way. We're all very disappointed in him and very surprised. And that's putting it mildly.

S. O'BRIEN: What has been the plan about returning to work? I know seven -- how many have gone back to work and how many decided they were just going to ditch their jobs. Because hey, you don't have to work anymore.

HABIB: Well, two of them have gone back to work. One of them works part-time and the other one is also part-time and she's a floater. And the rest of us -- most of us are on leave. It's my understanding two people have turned in their resignation and I don't know about the rest of them as of yet.

S. O'BRIEN: How about you? What are you going to do?

HABIB: I'm on a leave and I probably -- I was planning on retiring next year anyway, so this helps that decision along a little bit quicker than I anticipated.

S. O'BRIEN: Yes, I bet it does. Overall, has it been a great experience or has it just been a -- different than what you expected dealing with the glow of victory, of a massive financial victory?

HABIB: It was very, very happy, elated, ecstatic when we were announced the winners and then it's the worry, like, OK, now what do we do with this, where do we put it, what's the right thing to do? Finding the right people to trust, to invest this money for you.

S. O'BRIEN: And so what's the answer to that? What do you do? And I guess, find the right people to trust on all fronts. What are you doing?

HABIB: We're still interviewing investors.

S. O'BRIEN: I don't know anything about investing, but I'm happy to help you out in any way I can.

HABIB: I wish somebody could.

S. O'BRIEN: Girl, I can help you spend your money! Jennifer Habib -- oops -- joining us this morning. We'll see how this claim, this lawsuit claim by a co-worker, turns out. Thanks for talking with this morning.

HABIB: You're welcome. Thank you very much.

M. O'BRIEN: I think Andy would like to offer financial support.

S. O'BRIEN: There we go. Why didn't I think of you?

ANDY SERWER, "FORTUNE" COLUMNIST: I've been right here, Soledad. Ready to help, ready to help.

(CROSSTALK)

SERWER: Ready to help out. My fees are pretty low, too.

Coming up, a bad Santa incident at a Wal-Mart in Florida. You won't want to miss this. Stay tuned to AMERICAN MORNING.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

S. O'BRIEN: Happy birthday, Leslie Stahl. And the singer from Boys II Men.

SERWER: Yes, good call. I did not know that. Thank you.

S. O'BRIEN: Had a little crush for a while. M. O'BRIEN: It's ABBA morning. It's an ABBA kind of day.

S. O'BRIEN: Tell us the story you were teasing for us. What happened at Wal-Mart.

SERWER: The bad Santa incident at Wal-Mart in Florida? We'll talk about in just one second.

M. O'BRIEN: Get the kids out of the room before we tell Bad Santa stories, though, don't you think?

SERWER: No, kids might want to hear about this.

M. O'BRIEN: Oh, they do want to hear this?

SERWER: It's not even R-rated. It's just PG-13. What are we up there? Thirty-seven points on the Dow, a little bit of a rally. A light day on Wall Street, though. You best believe a lot of people telecommuting this morning in Manhattan and that means they're not coming to work. That's what telecommuting means.

M. O'BRIEN: But they have a good excuse.

SERWER: They do because of the storm and because of the possible or partial transit strike.

Here's what's going on in -- where is it? North Lauderdale, Florida, at a Wal-Mart yesterday, some activists, anti-Wal-Mart activists from Wake-up Wal-Mart got into a scuffle with the manager of a Wal-Mart and several were arrested.

Now, accounts differ, but here's what we got. Several of these activists were dressed as Santa and his selves. According to Wal- Mart, some of these protesters entered the store and began to hand out gifts, packages, wrapped packages, to children. These packages were empty. I guess it's some sort of political theater.

S. O'BRIEN: That is so cruel.

SERWER: Political theater. Political theater here.

M. O'BRIEN: That's a mean trick.

SERWER: The children started to cry. I mean, you may want to remove the children from the room at this point. The children started to cry because they were given empty presents. The protesters were told to leave the store. Some of them did, but apparently got into a scuffle with the manager in the parking lot and were arrested.

The activists say they were singing Christmas carols, but they didn't directly address whether or not they were handing out these packages as Wal-Mart suggests, but they didn't deny that either. So a little political theater for you all.

S. O'BRIEN: That kind of trick could backfire on you if you're trying to raise awareness for whatever there issue is against... SERWER: Right.

S. O'BRIEN: And you start, you know...

SERWER: Well, what are you going to do? Trip old ladies in the store?

S. O'BRIEN: That, too.

SERWER: At some point, you know...

S. O'BRIEN: Not necessarily a good strategy to bring people on your side, especially when you have bawling children.

SERWER: No. That doesn't work.

S. O'BRIEN: I'm not sure any parent inside that Wal-Mart is going to sympathetic to whatever their message was...

M. O'BRIEN: But, I mean, I still don't get -- this is a religious campaign.

SERWER: No, no, no.

(CROSSTALK)

S. O'BRIEN: Are they saying there's a metaphor with the empty package?

SERWER: That's exactly what they're doing. Thank you, Ms. O'Brien.

(CROSSTALK)

M. O'BRIEN: I'm glad you clarified that for me.

SERWER: A lot of stuff going on there, let's put it that.

S. O'BRIEN: All right, Andy, thank you. CNN live coming up next, Daryn's working on that. Good morning.

DARYN KAGAN, CNN ANCHOR: Soledad, good morning to you.

We're going to show you an America you have never seen before. An amazing new exhibit of color photos -- color -- taken during the Depression. It will literally change the way you look at the past.

Also, Soledad, have you regifted? Given someone a gift perhaps you didn't want?

S. O'BRIEN: Oh, you found it.

KAGAN: I have a little thing for you here.

S. O'BRIEN: Oh, great, send it soon so I can rewrap it for somebody else. KAGAN: We're going to actually -- there's some ways that it's appropriate to do this and we're going to talk about the right etiquette of regifting in our top five tips.

S. O'BRIEN: Well, good.

M. O'BRIEN: You know, I have a theory on that. I have a theory there are only six fruit cakes in the world.

SERWER: They're getting older.

M. O'BRIEN: Circulating around.

S. O'BRIEN: Absolutely. All right, Daryn, looking forward to that, thanks.

Well, you probably heard this, that churches are canceling -- some churches canceling services on Christmas Day. A little controversy around that. Take a look, though, at the choice that some are offering instead. You can pray in front of the TV. That's one option. This weekend, "CNN SUNDAY MORNING" is going to take a look at all those options. That show begins 7:00 a.m. Eastern time.

M. O'BRIEN: Obviously Arlo Guthrie wanted to speak up on that subject. There he was for just a moment. Let's listen for just a moment, shall we?

(MUSIC)

M. O'BRIEN: There you go, "The Train Called City of New Orleans." Great song. It was made famous, of course, by folk singer Arlo Guthrie and now Guthrie is riding the real city of New Orleans train to the Crescent City, part of an effort to help with recovery and specifically the musicians. We'll talk about his efforts, just ahead on AMERICAN MORNING.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

M. O'BRIEN: "Fifteen cars and 15 restless rider, three conductors and 25 sacks of mail," words by songwriter Steve Goodman, made immortal for all of us by folk singer Arlo Guthrie, the best train song ever written, released in 1972, now has new meaning and purpose. Arlo Guthrie rode the real train, city of New Orleans to the Crescent City, offering up benefit concerts all of the way to Katrina victims who happen to be musicians.

Arlo Guthrie joining us live now from the city of New Orleans.

Arlo, good to have you with us. How'd you get the idea for the tour?

ARLO GUTHRIE, MUSICIAN: Well, I didn't know what to do after, you know, we were watching this disaster unfold, and sent some money to the Red Cross like millions of others, and I wondered if there was something they could do that would be unique to me. And at what point, I was watching, you know, CNN. I saw a little scroll across the screen saying that Amtrak was resuming service to the crescent city on the city of New Orleans, and I thought, now there's something we could do.

M. O'BRIEN: A little bell went off.

GUTHRIE: You know. And I sent out an e-mail to some friends, and within 20 minutes I got a response from Richard Pryor and his wife, Jennifer, saying is there anything we can do to help? And I thought, this might go somewhere.

M. O'BRIEN: Wow. Wow. Well, God rest his soul, Richard Pryor there in the midst of all this, having passed away.

You started in Chicago, 10 days ago, concerts all along the way. Tell us about the reception you've gotten.

GUTHRIE: Well, Richard and his wife sponsored the first show we did in Chicago. We had very little lead time. Normally it would take about a year to put this together, but we had three to four weeks, and my daughters and family all got together and worked on this. We started in Chicago with the Vick Theater, which is right around the corner from where I first heard the song "City of New Orleans" 35, 40 years ago, and little by little, as we went south, the crowds got bigger and bigger, better and better because we had the lead time, and finally we're in New Orleans, the first night sold out with Willie Nelson, and we had to add another night. So we're looking forward to what's going on now.

M. O'BRIEN: We're glad to hear about the sellout. Just tell us where all this money is going specifically.

GUTHRIE: Well, I thought the best idea would be to support the kind of people that our family has always been, you know, the musicians playing for tips, bars, the nameless guys who may not have their name in lights or something like that, but the guys who are working on the street and whatever, and to get some instruments back into their hands, so we're working with a number of different foundations, the Tipitina Foundation, the Music Cares Foundation, the Gibson Guitar Company, Amtrak came through for us, and so we've got a number of people that will help us get these instruments in to people who they've been working with for a long time.

M. O'BRIEN: Yes. It's hard to overstate how important music is to the city of New Orleans.

GUTHRIE: I don't think you can. I mean, all the rock 'n' roll that we're hearing, all of the country music, all the bluegrass and blues, I mean, all of that tradition starts in New Orleans. It doesn't start in Hollywood, or New York, or Nashville or something like that, great cities, but it all started here in New Orleans about 100 years ago.

M. O'BRIEN: Who else has been riding on the train with you?

GUTHRIE: Well, Cyril Neville joined us for the first couple of shows. Clive Davis showed up for some, and my old buddy Willie Nelson is going to join us here in New Orleans. Plus, all of my family. I have three daughter, Annie, Kathy And Sara Lee, her husband, Johnny Iryan (ph), my son, Abe, and a number of other people. My old buddy Rambling Jack Elliott showed up unexpectedly in Memphis, and he's here in New Orleans, too. And there's a host of other people that have been helping with us this. I could name -- by the time I got done thanking everybody, we'd be done.

M. O'BRIEN: All right, we've got a couple of shows at the famous Tipitina's coming up. You say they're sold out. If folks at home want to help out, we invite you to go to arlo.net, right? And you can -- is there a way to contribute there?

GUTHRIE: Yes, there is. And not only that, when the curtain drops on the last of these shows we're going to continue, because this will take decades to put this city back, although I can tell you that there's much more spirit here than I ever would have imagined. These folks are roaring back to life down here.

M. O'BRIEN: Arlo Guthrie, good to see you. You look great.

GUTHRIE: Thank you.

M. O'BRIEN: He'll be gone 500 miles before the day is done. Back with more in just a moment.

GUTHRIE: Yes, we will!

M. O'BRIEN: All right.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

S. O'BRIEN: We're out of time, guys. That's it for AMERICAN MORNING. Have a great weekend. We're going to hand you over to Daryn Kagan.

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