Dog Days of Summer - Still No Bianca's Furry Friends

As the summer winds down, it's time to recap the highlights of an eventful summer for satellite radio host Howard Stern and his wife Beth Stern.

The Howard Stern Show 

During the last few years, the Stern show has had a very light schedule in August, but this year, it broke from that recent practice and treated fans to nine live shows during August.

The content wasn't exactly hitting it out of the park though, as guests included several people who had done the show multiple times in the past, such as: 

• Seth Rogen (I think Seth may have tried marijuana once or twice in his life - did expert interviewer Howard get to this?)
• Jonah Hill
• Tracy Morgan, and 
• Amy Schumer (the hard-hitting interview unfortunately didn't have any questions about her alleged theft of material from other comics).

Sirius/XM subscribers may have thought they tuned into the old OutQ channel, as there also seemed to be plenty of discussion of male genitalia - Howard spent lots of time discussing his search for uncensored pictures of a naked Orlando Bloom, as well as disturbing bits called "Boner Bongo" (which involved male staffers dropping their pants to play the bongos with their dicks), "Prostate Karaoke" (staffers drop their pants and sing karaoke during a prostate exam - "that's gold Jerry, gold"), as well as Richard Christy embarrassing himself by dropping his pants to try on electric cock ring.  While the Stern show is now evolved and does not have segments involving naked women (which segments seemed to taper off once Howard TV "went dark"), Howard seems to feature more than a fair share of talk and segments involving naked dudes.

America's Got Talent 

For the first time in 4 years, Howard is not serving as a judge on NBC's America's Got Talent.  As we have seen before, the "Stern effect" on AGT ratings wasn't exactly stellar while he served as the self-glossed America's judge, although some Stern fans thought that his mere presence would cause ratings to skyrocket.

Simon Cowell replaced Howard as a judge this year and ratings are up - earlier this week ratings in the key 18-49 demo for the semi-final performance show were also nearly 20% higher than comparable ratings during 2015, with a 2.5 rating compared to last year's dismal 2.1 rating.

I do not believe that Howard has had much discussion about the AGT ratings increase this year on the Howard Stern radio show as the show is too jam packed with great bits - see the item above for some of the killer content that has filled the show's airtime during the summer.

Annual Magazine Cover and Lots of Kittens
 
Beth Stern has also had a busy summer - in case fans didn't know, Beth was again featured on the cover of a magazine called "Social Life".

Thank you @sociallifemagazine for writing about my passion for animals and my foster work! I'll wear a bikini and pose for you anytime...Bringing awareness helps me save more lives. 💗

A photo posted by Beth Stern (@bethostern) on Aug 12, 2016 at 4:41am PDT

This magazine isn't well-known outside of the Hamptons, but the Sterns managed to get an article written about the photo shoot and cover in the Daily Mail.

The 44 year old animal activist also posted many of the Social Life pictures to Instagram, and floods her account with many pictures of cats (and herself) each day -
 

I lost Lottie in my cleavage

A photo posted by Beth Stern (@bethostern) on Aug 17, 2016 at 4:47pm PDT

 
In honor of the Olympics, the Hallmark Channel rolled out its kitten sports special over the summer and they were lucky to find that Beth was available to host the event, which was called the Kitten Summer Games. 
 
Unfortunately, the ratings for said Kitten Summer Games did not draw the 'millions' of people who listen to the Stern show, as it finished with a 0.07 rating and was the #115 show on cable for the night). 

Beth will be back on the Hallmark Channel with another animal-related show this fall, as she is hosting the Hero Dog Awards again.

Bianca's Furry Friends - September 2016 Update 

Fans again may have been excited for a possible summer ground breaking of the Bianca's Furry Friends addition at the North Shore Animal League.  While promoting a North Shore Animal League event in June, Beth gave fans some hope that Bianca's Furry Friends may get started this summer, as she said:
 
  "...the opening of Bianca's Furry Friends is probably still a few years away, they will hopefully be breaking ground at the end of the summer."
 
Now that September has started, it doesn't look too promising for a summer ground breaking for Bianca's Furry Friends - as we have seen before, this is not a new pattern with respect to the promised start date of Bianca's Furry Friends, but this is the first time I recall seeing that the opening of the kitty wing will be "a few years" after it gets started.  Looks like it will be 2018 at the earliest for the NSAL addition to finally open up after first being announced in 2013.
 
Needless to say, the NSAL is still trying to raise money for Bianca's Furry Friends - proceeds from two more events later this year will be donated to BFF: (1) the Gold Coast Affair on September 14 (unfortunately, tickets appear to be sold out) and (2) the 2016 annual gala on November 18.

Even if the summer ends without Bianca's Furry Friends breaking ground, maybe the additional cash from these events will be enough to allow for a 2017 ground breaking.