Jim Florentine

No Injuries Reported as Convoy is Attacked After USO Show

Howard Stern comics bombed, no joke

Thursday, July 3rd 2008, 4:00 AM

Howard Stern pals Gary Dell’Abate and Artie Lange came under fire after performing a comedy show in Afghanistan.

Howard Stern nearly lost his closest cohorts in Afghanistan this week.

Stern’s Sirius radio show producer Gary Dell’Abate, show regular Artie Lange and comedians Nick DiPaolo, Jim Florentine and Dave Attell had just finished a comedy show for troops in Kandahar when the base came under attack.

“Everything was going fine until the end,” a friend of the comics, who heard from them by cell phone, tells us. “They were all done with their sets, and they were headed in a car convoy to a meet-and-greet elsewhere, but they only made it about 20 yards.

“The military base they were on came under mortar fire, and the convoy was turned around.”

Troops led the comics into a secure bunker, where they all waited for a very unfunny 35 minutes as the shelling continued.

Eventually it stopped, and the comedians, all uninjured, went on to continue the USO/Armed Forces Entertainment tour at other undisclosed locations in the Persian Gulf. Tony Burton, Dell’Abate’s rep, confirmed the incident but couldn’t comment.

Before they left for Afghanistan, callers like lawyer Dominic Barbara phoned in to the Stern show and wondered if the comics, especially those like Dell’Abate, who has children, should be risking their lives.

But Dell’Abate seemed most concerned about the 22-hour flight to the country, saying he’d never flown longer than seven hours.

Lange seemed most worried about what material they could use, given the Army’s orders not to make jokes involving President Bush, sex, race, religion, drugs or drinking.

Any safety fears he may have had surely disappeared when he heard how desperate the troops are for entertainment. In fact, when the soldiers heard they were getting a show, they were ecstatic, according to the Stern fan site Marksfriggin.com.

So far, Scarlett Johansson, Robin Williams, Kid Rock, Toby Keith, Morgan Freeman, Jessica Simpson, Kelli Pickler and bands O.A.R. and Five for Fighting have been among the few courageous enough to go to the war zones to bring soldiers a bit of cheer.

But Stern himself may have had the last word on the tour when he joked, “Why is Gary going, anyway? He’s not even funny.”

No worries: Dell’Abate is serving as the tour’s emcee.

Justice Department gives thumbs up to satellite radio merger more than one year after it was first announced.

March 24, 2008: 4:21 PM EDT

In its decision, the Department of Justice determined that an XM-Sirius merger was not anti-competitive. The Justice Department argued that other media companies such as Clear Channel (CCU, Fortune 500), CBS (CBS, Fortune 500), or even Apple (AAPL, Fortune 500) with its iTunes software and iPod music player served as alternate options for music and media customers.

The Department of Justice did not place any conditions on the merger.

“Since we determined that there was no competition between the companies, we did not need to set any conditions as such,” said Assistant Attorney General Thomas Barnett during a conference call with reporters Monday afternoon.

But the Federal Communications Commission must also approve the deal. The FCC has yet to make a decision on the merger and it could decide to place conditions on the deal. A spokesperson for the FCC was not immediately available for comment.

Since Sirius and XM are still awaiting approval from the FCC, it is unclear exactly what a merger would mean for consumers. Both companies charge their customers a $12.95 per month subscription fee for their most basic packages. Some have feared that if Sirius and XM are allowed to merge, the two companies would raise the monthly price.

However, the companies said last year that they would be willing to offer a so-called “a la carte” price plan where consumers could pick certain packages for less money.

The merger would combine the nation’s only two satellite radio companies and create a company with about 14 million subscribers. It would bring together Sirius’ most well-known content, including shock jock Stern and National Football League games with XM’s Major League Baseball as well as programming from Oprah Winfrey.

Currently, subscribers for either Sirius or XM can only receive broadcasts from one of the two services with their satellite radios. But in a statement Monday, XM reiterated that radios owned by its current subscribers would not need to be replaced in order to continue receiving programming.