WWW- Today we’re taking a tour of Mr. Stern’s neighborhood, led by your host, Howard Stern. We start in the 36th-floor lobby of Sirius, the satellite-radio company that is reportedly paying Stern $500 million to bring his bawdy talk show to its airwaves next month.

Even without knowing Stern’s paycheck, you can tell that Sirius has major money. There are 42 studios lining the hallways, some with drop-dead views of New York and all fronted by gleaming glass. We walk by each one-the country-and-Western channel, the sports channel-and without fail the hosts all smile and wave at the very tall man in tinted glasses and a red hoodie. “This is an amazing place,” says Stern, his curly hair still damp from a run in the park. “I’ve never been in such an exciting environment.” This is a genuine, if double-edged, remark, because what Stern is also thinking is, fresh meat. Even though he’s forbidden to appear on Sirius’s air until Jan. 9, Stern has already started skulking around. Last week he disrupted the gay channel’s chat with Tony Orlando and started dancing with him, while poor Dawn could only sing in the background. Stern seems almost giddy: “This is heaven.”Story continues below ? advertisement

And the hits keep coming. We come to an enormous poster of oldies DJ Cousin Brucie, another Sirius host. “This guy is a legend,” Stern says-another double-edged comment. Hasn’t Stern mocked Brucie’s singsongy baritone for years? “Yeah,” he admits. “I’m gonna bust his balls every single day.” We walk a little, past an interview-in-progress with Washington Redskin John Riggins and a visit from CNBC’s David Faber, when from around the corner appears rapper 50 Cent. 50-big diamonds, big posse, big smile-gives Stern a hug and asks when he can be on the new program. “I’ll bring my own strippers,” offers 50. “I’ll bring my own whores,” says Stern, “and we can really make a show.”

And all this can be yours for $12.95 a month. That’s the subscription fee for Sirius, which sounds like a lot, considering that you get radio free Howard right now. But you also get the government analyzing every fart joke, which, if you’re a Stern fan, is about as noxious as it gets. Across the top of the howardstern.com Web site is a countdown clock surrounded by the words: The revolution begins in … No more FCC, no more boss, no more interference. We’re going to the promised land! Like cable TV, satellite radio isn’t subject to federal decency laws, so Stern will be free as the breeze. How far will he go? That’s going to be the interesting part. Sirius doesn’t have a standards department. “We have executives who have taste and judgment,” says Scott Greenstein, president of entertainment at Sirius, “and we have Howard Stern, who clearly knows where the line is.” Yes, he does. And he will hurdle over it every chance he gets.

Besides, Stern will have to make a lot of noise just to get noticed in his new digs. Sirius has more than 2.2 million subscribers; Stern’s current audience is 12 million. For the self-proclaimed King of All Media-he also takes partial credit for the advent of reality TV, lesbian chic, “The View” and Rush Limbaugh-that plunge is a lot to swallow, though Stern already seems to have lured 1.6 million new subscribers to Sirius. “It’s like spending years and years building a building and then losing control to another developer,” says Robin Quivers, his longtime sidekick. “Sometimes you wonder: What will happen to us? Do you risk your entire legacy by transferring to this new thing?” On the air in recent weeks, Stern has fretted repeatedly about his audience’s not following him to Sirius, of not being loved enough for them to pay for him. “To me-and this is a sickness-my audience will never be big enough,” he says.

So what does a king do on a shrunken throne? For one thing, he’s bringing back many of his greatest hits from early in his career, before he racked up millions in FCC fines. Bits like “It’s Just Wrong,” where fathers and daughters undress each other, and “The Bathroom Olympics,” where Howard and his guys race to see who can pee first. He’s creating a bigger and better bikini rack. “It can drop out of the ceiling, which is nice,” Stern says. “I’ve gotten into a few of those bikinis myself, when I was in better shape.” He’s also thinking seriously about putting cameras in the bathroom that’s being built especially for the Wack Pack-Wendy the Retard, High-Pitched Eric, Jeff the Drunk, Cleft Palate and the others who make up Howard’s island of misfit toys.

It’ll be lewd, crude and totally nude-and also available in living color if you subscribe to the Howard Stern on Demand cable channel. Perhaps the only thing you won’t see when Howard goes to satellite: a stripper pole, which, contrary to published reports, will not be a part of the new studio. “When you go to a strip club, you see someone on a pole and it’s disgusting,” Stern says. So Greenstein is right. Howard does know where to draw the line.