Last month, we reported that Howard Stern’s eponymous SiriusXM radio show is “to be canceled.” On Monday morning, Stern finally spoke out to reveal the fate of The Howard Stern Show.
Is The Howard Stern Show Continuing?
Despite previous reports, Stern has managed to renew his contract with SiriusXM. Stern, 71, confirmed this by bringing his fellow SiriusXM host Andy Cohen, 57, on for a staged bit.
“I know you’re expecting a big announcement from Howard and this is not how things were meant to go,” Cohen began, adding that it’s been a “surreal morning here.”
“There’s been a lot of talk about what’s going to happen with Howard’s deal. Is he fired? I don’t know how much I’m allowed to say, except that he’s not here and I am,” Cohen continued. “Howard was supposed to start the show today, and this was supposed to be something of a cleaner handoff. There is nothing clean about it. Here we are. I’m kind of winging it.”
Cohen went on to claim that he was taking over the channel with his new show Andy 100.
“I can’t overstate what Howard has meant to this company and what he did for SiriusXM,” Cohen added. “He walked so that we could run. I can’t possibly fill his void.”
Stern Sounds Off
Stern eventually appeared, only to reveal that this was all a joke. He quickly confirmed that he will be returning to SiriusXM after all.
“I’m going to have to fill everyone in,” Stern said. He then claimed that he missed last week’s shows because he was sick. This contradicts previous reports that alleged that Stern had actually missed the shows due to contract negotiations.
“I was just getting so [expletive] annoyed with everyone writing me, asking me if I was OK because I’d been fired,” Stern ranted.
“I’m minding my own business, enjoying my summer vacation,” he stated. “[A reporter] says that I’ve been fired for being too woke. In light of the Stephen Colbert firing — because the word on Stephen was that it was all part of this merger, and they fired Stephen because he’s too woke — the story then became ‘Howard Stern is fired because he’s too woke.’ I still don’t even know what that means.”
This was a reference to CBS canceling Stephen Colbert’s late night talk show. This came after the show was revealed to be costing the network $40 million per year.
“Then all of a sudden, I’m sitting home and everybody I know in my world, even peripherally, is writing me. ‘Are you OK, are you OK?. None of it is true, zero truth,” Stern concluded. “I’m very happy at Sirius.”
Stern Goes Woke
Like Colbert, Stern had alienated a large chunk of his audience by going woke. Stern was once known as the shock jock of radio. That’s all changed in recent years, as he’s become just another mouthpiece for the radical left. Indeed, he frequently bashes Donald Trump, telling those who voted for the president that “they’re stupid.”
The Howard Stern Show has been airing on SiriusXM since 2006. Viewership has plummeted over the years. Indeed, it has declined from 20 million a week in the 1990s to as low as 125,000 today.
Stern has reportedly postponed his return to next Monday, September 8.
“Today was the day to answer all questions and yet the controversy continues. Howard Stern will now speak Monday,” The Howard Stern Show said in a brief announcement.
Last month, it was reported that Stern and his staff of 95 people were “blindsided” by reports that The Howard Stern Show will be ending at the end of this year. However, insiders later alleged that this was just a desperate stunt from The Howard Stern Show in the hopes of making the program relevant again.
“They’re desperately trying to make this thing go viral to try to boost his numbers for his return,” one insider claimed in August. “His numbers are down so low that they’re trying … to get people to tune in to see what he’s going to say about getting ‘fired’ from Sirius.”
The source went on to say that the scheme was “something they came up with on a viral scale to get people to tune in again” since Stern’s numbers are “pathetic.”
SiriusXM Executives Weigh In
Last week, SiriusXM executives claimed that they were hopeful about Stern renewing his contract.
“We’d love [for Stern] to stay. It certainly has to make sense, but we feel pretty good that we’ve done this before, and we’ll see where it goes,” said Scott Greenstein, SiriusXM’s chief content officer and president, told Variety.
CEO Jennifer Witz chimed in to add, “I think he’s been core to our platform for over 20 years, so I’m confident we’ll get to the right place.”
Stern continuing his show on SiriusXM won’t do anything to help him become relevant. In the end, Stern has learned the hard way that “go woke, go broke” is very real indeed!