ON a typical day last week, the radio “shock jock” Howard Stern claimed on air that he had been savouring a nude picture of Petra Nemcova, a model who had lost her British boyfriend in the Asian tsunami. A sidekick chimed in that she was the “hottest girl” he had ever interviewed, hotter than Britney Spears or Heidi Klum.

Stern complained that Klum wasn’t “all that hot” and they proceeded to discuss who was hot and who was not. The DJ went on to talk about the size of his penis and how he always looked at it in a mirror when he went to the bathroom.

Tasteful? No. Uncensored? You might think so. But Stern regards himself as a persecuted man on the run from interference by the American nanny state. He has signed a $500m (£267m) contract with Sirius satellite pay-radio and is taking his wares to a market where he can ogle porn stars and dwarfs — some of his favourite guests — without getting bleeped.

The self-proclaimed “king of all radio” claims to be “flying the freakin’ flag of the First Amendment”, the constitutional guarantee of free speech in America. Critics retort that his smut should not be freely available on the airwaves. What is not in dispute is that his departure portends a revolution in radio comparable with that in cable and terrestrial television.

With so much pornography entering mainstream culture via the internet, Stern’s rude remarks barely raise a blush. But defenders of the First Amendment are concerned that free speech is being “privatised”, marking a victory for the moral values brigade from Bush-voting red states.

“It’s so un-American. The prudes are only a small minority but they have a loud voice and they can force free speech into a pay form,” said Jeff Jarvis, a media critic. “They are setting the stage for things that are edgier and more creative to go into a pay world.”

Stern will not be joining Sirius until next January, yet he has already had a dramatic effect on the company’s share price. “In the cycle of stock market emotions, satellite radio is somewhere between thrill and euphoria,” one analyst noted. Sirius announced last week that it quadrupled sales in 2004 and now had more than 1.1m subscribers.

That is still small beer compared to Stern’s 8m mostly male listeners who currently do not pay to hear his lewd jokes. But millions more are likely to migrate to satellite and internet radio. Sirius also signed a deal last year with Maxim for “lads’ radio” and a joint venture with Eminem, Shade 45, has begun broadcasting round-the-clock, unexpurgated hip-hop.

Stern’s disenchantment with the free airwaves set in last year when he was fired from half a dozen radio stations for obscenity and fined $495,000 (£265,000) by the watchdog Federal Communications Commission (FCC). His employer, Infinity, was fined $1.75m (£935,000).

Last week he was yanked from four more stations for promoting his move to satellite radio. “Regrettably, Mr Stern has transformed the content of his show into a continuous infomercial promoting Sirius,” said Citadel, the stations’ owner.

It was the singer Janet Jackson’s exposure of her breast during the Superbowl last spring that led to a crackdown by Michael Powell, the head of the FCC and son of Colin Powell, the secretary of state. He threatened to fine television and radio stations up to $3m (£1.6m) and vowed to strip them of their operating licences if necessary.

Stern not only fought Powell but portrayed George W Bush as public enemy number one in the run-up to last November’s election. “I’m tellin’ you, man, he’s in dangerous territory (with) a religious agenda and you gotta vote him out — anyone but Bush,” Stern fumed.

The American left rallied to his cause, whether fans of his or not. Katrina vanden Heuvel, editor of The Nation magazine, noted: “Stern has degraded the quality of radio by trafficking in crude sexual references and unseemly racial remarks for as long as he’s been in broadcasting, but the issue here isn’t indecency, it’s the First Amendment.”

Powell said last week he was not interested in censoring satellite radio. The upside to Stern’s banishment, according to Jarvis, is the surge in new media. “More content means more choice and more creativity. All the old networks are becoming less and less relevant.”

Only 11% of Americans watch television from a broadcast signal and some of the most innovative programmes such as Sex and the City — made by HBO — are found only on cable. “At first HBO used the ‘f’ word because they could . . . but they make spectacular shows now,” said Jarvis. “They grew up.”

Stern, 51, has no intention of doing that.

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