'Radio Andy' Cohen plans SiriusXM channel

Ann Oldenburg | USA TODAY

Andy Cohen has carved out a niche getting wild and candid with guests on Watch What Happens Live, his late-night Bravo talk show.

But he promises things will get even wilder when he heads to SiriusXM radio with his own 24/7 channel.

Get ready for Radio Andy, created and curated by Cohen. SiriusXM says it will launch later this year, probably late summer or fall.

"It's an entire channel!" says Cohen, happily touting the news in a phone call Monday. "Maybe the inmates are running the asylum."

As part of the deal, Cohen says he "will be on at minimum two hours live, once a week" with his own show.

And he'll also be in charge of filling the rest of the hours. In other words, he's hiring. He wouldn't give up any names of possible program hosts, saying those details still have to be worked out.

"I'm talking to people that I love who have strong voices and something to say, and I want to give them a place to say it. When you look at the entire breadth of the channel, I think it's going to be a really unique group of people that represent my world."

Cohen says he's been talking to SiriusXM's chief Scott Greenstein about a satellite channel "for years," and loved a five-week hosting stint in 2012. "The moment seemed right" to do it again, he says.

"Certainly the idea of having a place that I could program and do whatever I want, where ratings and censorship are not an issue was incredibly appealing to me."

He calls Howard Stern, who has been on SiriusXM since 2006, one of his "broadcasting heroes."

SiriusXM, which had 27.3 million subscribers in December, is expected to build a small studio at Watch What Happens Live, though Cohen will also work from SiriusXM studios at Rockefeller Center.

Cohen says his new venture will be broader than his late-night show, tackling both "deep and shallow" topics, from Real Housewives to theater to documentaries.

"Radio Andy is not a Bravo channel," he says. "This channel is really going to be my fantasy, my aggregation of everything I love about pop culture, from the higher end to the lower end. One of the great things about radio is it's a medium where you can really kind of let yourself go and let people know exactly who you are."

We thought he already did that on Watch What Happens Live. Should we expect an even sexier, crazier Cohen?

"I think it's going to be an even freer me."

Yes, it will still be like a live cocktail party, he says, "but it will be much more relaxed and more conversational. It'll be me 2.0."