January 30, 2007 1:34 PM ET Sirius Satellite Radio Draws Stars
All Associated Press News NEW YORK (AP) - Shortly after making his
entrance, Oscar winner Jamie Foxx found model Janice Dickinson and
her ample cleavage pressed tightly against him. Foxx posed for a
photo-op with hip-hop legend Grandmaster Flash, and later traded
handshakes and hugs with New York Giants linebacker LaVar Arrington.
The VIP lounge at Lotus? The red carpet at the Grammys?
Try the star-studded offices of Sirius Satellite Radio Inc., a haven for bold-faced names found 36 floors above Manhattan in a Rockefeller Center skyscraper.
The company headquarters draws an eclectic collection of celebrities, sports stars, musicians and Martha Stewart, often simultaneously, with many wandering casually through the halls on their way to or from a studio.
The diversity of talent is best summed up this way: Howard Stern and Cardinal Edward Egan do their shows a few hundred feet apart. Only here could "The King of All Media" and a prince of the church cross paths -- uncensored, of course.
"You walk through the halls here, and it's absolutely mind-blowing," Stern said. "There's energy, and there's synergy. You walk out after a show and wind up hanging out. ... It's like a big old kibbutz."
A somewhat typical morning found Foxx announcing his new Sirius channel as singer Evan Dando performed live in a nearby studio. National Football League All-Pro Tiki Barber fielded questions for the NFL Network, and author/Sirius host Candace Bushnell of "Sex and the City" fame quizzed Dickinson.
At the end of a hallway, Stewart's daughter Alexis sat on the floor, kicking around ideas for her upcoming program. And Sean Avery of the Los Angeles Kings took advantage of the National Hockey League All-Star break to do an interview in yet another studio.
"It's neat -- it's a mosh pit, a melting pot, and we're all here doing the same thing," said Barber, the recently retired Giants star who co-hosts a Sirius show with twin brother Ronde.
Sirius offers more than 130 channels, including 69 music channels and 65 channels of sports, news, talk, entertainment, traffic and weather, and is fighting for subscribers with XM Satellite Radio, which features its own star-studded lineup and 7.6 million customers.
XM features Opie & Anthony, Stern's longtime nemesis, along with Oprah Winfrey's channel, Bob Dylan's "Theme Time Radio Hour," major league baseball and "The Ellen DeGeneres Show." Recent rumblings suggested the two satellite services could merge at some point, although the chairman of the Federal Communications Commission said earlier this month that the companies' licenses precluded such a move.
Although Sirius features the NFL, the National Basketball Association, CNN and NPR, its main attraction remains Stern, who joined the satellite world in January 2006 and now runs a pair of stations for the company.
One year after Stern's arrival, Sirius boasts a little more than 6 million subscribers -- far beyond projections by Wall Street analysts of 3.5 million by the end of 2006. Stern's efforts in boosting Sirius earned him an $82.9 million bonus, despite the company's up-and-down stock price.
But Stern said his move to satellite also invigorated his show (although perhaps not as much as his wallet). Stern producer Gary Dell'Abate offered an example of how things work at Sirius: Richard Simmons, who does his own show, showed up in studio to end a long-running feud with Howard.
The Stern show even landed one big guest found just walking around the floor: Smokey Robinson, who stuck around for a 20-minute stint.
"The cool thing is running into people in the building," Dell'Abate said. "And there's always people in the building."
It's true. JD Williams, who played the doomed character Bodie on HBO's "The Wire," strolls through the halls almost unnoticed shortly after Foxx departed. The Stern crew managed to get Foxx on the air for their daily wrap-up show.
The white hallways are scrawled with signatures written in black markers by guests from the various programs, with plenty of musical acts represented: the Beach Boys, Alice Cooper, the Raveonettes. The scrawl fits in with the loose atmosphere, where the stars are so ubiquitous they can almost feel anonymous.
By afternoon, renowned disc jockey "Cousin Brucie" Morrow is preparing for his show; down the hall, so is former presidential candidate Bill Bradley. Morrow raves about the buzz around the floor, comparing it to the Brill Building -- the home of songwriting giants Burt Bacharach, Carole King, Neil Sedaka and others in the early 1960s.
"Howard and I bump into each other all the time," Morrow said of Stern. "I never thought I would hug and kiss Martha Stewart. ... You have personality here in the hallways."
Bradley, whose program is "American Voices," has his own list of random get-togethers. The former three-term U.S. senator from New Jersey brought musicians Bette Midler, Bonnie Raitt and Max Weinberg on his show after meeting them in the building.
"People come through," said Bradley, a bit more understated than Cousin Brucie.
Frank DeCaro, the former "Daily Show" fixture and a host on the gay Out-Q station, recalled a run-in gone wrong -- his encounter with the over-the-top Dickinson as she prowled the Sirius studios.
"She kissed me full on the mouth!" he said in mock horror. "She sucked my face! I mean, Jamie Foxx was here, but did he kiss me? No!"
Maybe next time. Stranger things have already happened: Stern said he was invited to appear on the Catholic Channel -- and he might do it.
"It could be kind of cool," he said.
© 2007 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
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