Saturday, September 10, 2016

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".


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 -
 
A photo posted by Beth Stern (@bethostern) on
 
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.
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Monday, June 13, 2016

Instagram Recycling and Video of a PETA Visit to the NSAL

Howard Stern's large backroom staff must have a hard time coming up with new material for the 12 hours of radio they do each week.  Although the creative meetings have led to comedy gold such as "Flat Ronnie" and "Ronnie the Robot", the show is still filled with stale, recycled bits, including impersonators of Presidential candidates, dreadful phony calls, parody songs about a 'hot' 60 year old overweight newswoman and Howard's fake Viet Nam war stories.

Howard's wife Beth has also done her share of recycling - on Instagram, where she has posted thousands of pictures over the years.

As we have seen before, some recurring themes of Beth Stern's Instagram account involved posting pictures of herself in revealing attire in order to please some "kittenposthaters" and also showing the foster kittens when they just happen to be near her fancy shoes and purses.

Here are a few more ideas which have been recycled over the years in the many thousands of her Instagram pictures:

Beth Has to Pee (aka Too Much Information)

For some reason, fostering kittens interferes with Beth's ability to use one of the many bathrooms in the Sterns' mansion in Southampton, although it's a good thing that Beth has her phone close by to capture the amazing moment for her followers.

Beth's followers lap this up as if it's original almost every time, even though she's posted a number of these pictures, complete with unusual hashtags, over the years:

January 2016 - #ihavetopee

October 2015 - #havetopee

September 2015

A photo posted by Beth Stern (@bethostern) on

August 2015 - Foster cat Peter Parker causing trouble


June 2015 - Has to pee

March 2015 - Yoda won't let Beth pee in peace

March 2015 - Picture with the late Apple the cat


January 2015 - Bella jumps on Beth's lap #yesmyphonewaswithme

October 2014 - I have to pee

Meditating Beth 

Howard Stern has been a big fan (big fan) of Transcendental Meditation for years, and Beth has taken up this practice as well.  Unfortunately, some of her meditation sessions are interrupted by the darn cats and kittens, but luckily she is able to get a picture for her followers.  Beth is also providing some handy tips on TM with these informative posts, as it's not common knowledge that one is supposed to keep a phone handy while lying down to meditate and an untrained observer may have mistaken her meditation for a nap.

May 2016 - Meditating with "bellaboo"

April 2016 - Wakes up from TM with a 'cat bum' in her face

April 2016 - A 'kitty toot' wakes Beth from her meditation

A photo posted by Beth Stern (@bethostern) on

November 2015 - Trying to meditate. #nothappening #TM  https://www.instagram.com/p/-Chb93IfIx/

October 2015 - Yoda interrupts a meditation session

NSAL Mentioned in a PETA Video

Beth is the spokesperson for the North Shore Animal League and it is the source of many of the foster kittens that have been featured in her social media pictures.

The NSAL is not shy about describing its 'no kill' status but as shown in  this PETA video below, the no kill shelter concept may not be as great as the name sounds and PETA is in favor of open admission shelters.

A PETA article from a few years ago (which contains a long list of disturbing stories about mistreatment of animals) explains the issue that PETA has with no kill shelters, and the basic concept seems to be:

 (1) there are only so many animals that are going to get adopted from shelters,

 (2) the no kill shelters fill up and they essentially leave others with the dirty work of having to put down animals that don't get adopted, and

 (3) because people are turned away from these no kill shelters, they often are left with no choice but to abandon their pets or end up giving them to places which mistreat them.

In the video below, the caption is "(s)lamming the door in the faces of needy homeless animals makes intake and euthanasia statistics sound favorable but lets animals down." 

The video features people being turned away at various shelters, and the crew visits the NSAL headquarters in Port Washington, NY at the 8:18 mark.  The NSAL person says that they only will accept animals that were originally adopted from the NSAL (?) and that 'a lot' of the animals that the NSAL places get returned to the shelter - the video closes with the line "no kill can mean no help for the neediest of animals."

  

There doesn't appear to be any easy way to fix to this, but in the meantime, another problem is still in search of a solution - after three years, the Stern show is still asking fans for money to help build Bianca's Furry Friends in this tweet from last week, this time in the form of an auction to sit in on the Stern show and the latest bid as of this date is $25,000.
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Sunday, February 28, 2016

Bianca's Furry Friends - 2016 Update

Unlike the former Howard 101 show Back Office Radio, the blog is back from a hiatus with an update on the favorite charity project of Howard Stern and Beth Stern - the Bianca's Furry Friends addition to the North Shore Animal League ("NSAL") headquarters in Port Washington, New York, as well as information about the somewhat clandestine Bianca's Furry Friends Foundation, which appears to be separate from the NSAL.

History

Animal lovers have been waiting for years for this project to get started - it resembles the plot of an early Seinfeld episode in which Jerry, Elaine and George were waiting for a table in a Chinese Restaurant - each time they would ask the maitre d' about the status of their table, he would tell them that it would be ready in five or ten minutes.

Similarly, it seems like the NSAL and its spokesperson, Beth Stern, continue to tell folks that the 14,000 square foot addition (with an estimated cost of $7 million) will be breaking ground "next spring" or at some other time in the near future, but it never seems to get started.

Timeline Recap

For those who don't recall the exact timeline, here is a quick overview (see last year's post for more details):

May 2013 - initial announcement of the master plan for Bianca's Furry Friends

May 2014 - Beth and an NSAL executive state that Bianca's Furry Friends is expected to break ground "next spring" (i.e. spring 2015)

January 2015 - Beth announces that they are "3/4 of the way there", with no estimate of when it will get started (the NSAL financial statements for the year ended December 31, 2014 show that there were about $4.25 million of assets restricted for use to fund BFF):




Spring 2015 - estimated start date mentioned in 2014 passes without anything happening

Subsequent Developments

Since the blog post in March 2015, there have been a few more developments regarding Bianca's Furry Friends, none of which involve the commencement of any actual construction:

November 2015 - another year, another NSAL gala with proceeds going to Bianca's Furry Friends.  Beth dropped a couple of nuggets about BFF while promoting the gala, and told Newsday that they were trying to raise the "final $1 million" to get the project funded and said in another interview with HNGN that:

   ""Bianca's Furry Friends, yes, that's going to break ground right after the new year," Ostrosky Stern told HNGN."

As the gala was only a few months ago, no one knows how much money it raised.  However, the NSAL's Form 990 for 2014 indicated that the amount of 2014 gala proceeds (gross, not net of expenses) was around $356K - this was down, way down, from the $610K of proceeds from the 2013 gala (see last year's blog post for details); hopefully this trend, unlike the ratings slide during Howard's tenure on America's Got Talent, didn't continue for 2015.



December 2015 - Another Yoda Book

For the second straight year, Beth, along with illustrator Devin Crane and "contributor" K.A. Alistir, released another children's book about her purebred Persian cat and her share of the proceeds would again benefit Bianca's Furry Friends.  This year's installment was titled Yoda Gets a Buddy and as of this date, one website estimates its Amazon sales at less than 1,000 copies.  Beth's share of the proceeds from the Amazon sales may not even cover the cost of one of the animal activist's fancy leather purses let alone the somewhat expensive NSAL kitten play palace.

February 2016 - Kitten Bowl

For the third straight year Beth appeared on the Hallmark Channel's Kitten Bowl and she was trotting around to promote the event (unfortunately, ratings were a dismal 0.2, less than a third of the 0.7 rating of Animal Planet's Puppy Bowl and the Kitten Bowl finished well out of the top 100 cable shows of the day).

She also discussed the status of Bianca's Furry Friends in some interviews.

In a WebMD interview, Beth once again broke out her statement that she has no "human children" and said that they will break ground early this year:

""I don't have human children," she says, "so this is my purpose. .... Howard and I are working on a 14,000-square-foot expansion of North Shore's existing shelter, called Bianca's Furry Friends. The space will allow the cats to live cage-free until they're adopted. Friends have been so supportive -- Billy Joel donated over a million dollars, and Rachael Ray presented me with a $500,000 check on her show. We'll break ground early this year."

In a Newsday article, Beth said:

"We are over $7 million, and that means we are ready to break ground,” she said. “We are waiting, I believe, on one more permit and as soon as we get that permit we are ready to go. So I’m thinking that within the next couple of months we are breaking ground, and my dream will finally come true."

Based on that claim, it sounds like the NSAL must have received that "final $1 million" that Beth mentioned in the November 2015 interview with Newsday, although it sounds like the ground breaking date may now be pushed back to April 2016.

Beth also mentioned in another article that Bianca's Furry Friends is "15,000 square feet" (up from the original 14,000 square feet?) and that they're "just waiting on permits".

Separate Foundation

As mentioned before on this blog, Beth is affiliated with a separate charity called the Bianca's Furry Friends Foundation.

Information about this foundation is fairly scarce, as the foundation does not appear to have a website and has not filed its initial Form 990 with the IRS, but a number of documents are available for the public to view online on a database of charities maintained by the New York attorney general.

These filings reveal that:

  (1) the President of the foundation is one Beth Ostrosky Stern,

  (2) the foundation was formed in January 2014 and first began maintaining assets in New York in May 2014 (interesting that this was near the time of the Billy Joel concert when he donated proceeds from a show to Bianca's Furry Friends), and



  (3) the foundation received over $270,000 of contributions through December 31, 2014 and it received its first donation in May 2014 - a check for $250K; this is a nice chunk of change for a foundation which hasn't received much (if any) public discussion. 




It is a bit odd that Beth Stern has never specifically mentioned this separate foundation, which has now been in existence for over 2 years.  Many of the devoted followers of her Instagram account who enjoy the many pictures of cats she posts each day might pony up some money to fund this foundation.

Hopefully the assets held by the foundation may be used to help fund the NSAL addition (maybe to help with the filing costs for the permits that Beth mentioned in her recent interviews).  In the meantime, it is just one more unknown regarding Bianca's Furry Friends, in addition to the moving target date of when the NSAL addition will finally break ground.
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