Howard Stern Re-Signs, But Questions His SiriusXM Run

 An End to Conjecture

 Howard Stern

Legendary radio personality Howard Stern (71), one of the original shock jocks, renews his radio deal with satellite broadcaster SiriusXM for multiple years. This move ends weeks of heavy speculation surrounding his professional future with the company. But the confirmation came in the characteristic form of a machination.

A Calculated Broadcast Subterfuge

Listeners on Monday morning who flipped on Stern’s usual 7 a.m. tape got a surprise not just from his familiar voice but from the voice of Andy Cohen. The radio host and television personality suggested a full handoff, a turn of the page. “There’s a lot of speculation about what’s going to happen with Howard’s deal,” Cohen said on the air. "Is he fired? I don’t know what I’m allowed to say, other than he’s not here and I am.”

The immediate aftermath was palpable. The news of Stern’s departure was reported in many media outlets, driving down the stock price of SiriusXM. Yet, this narrative was ephemeral. Ten minutes later, the moment was ruined as Stern went to the microphone and announced the whole thing was a hoax, deliberately concocted to be an elaborate prank. "In case you think it was real, it was all orchestrated by me," Stern added, stressing that the reports of him leaving were "not true at all."

Corporate Disclosures and the Origins of Rumors

While Stern has announced it on-air, SiriusXM has yet to put out a statement confirming the terms of a refreshed SGE contract. The corporate calculus behind what at the time was a high-stakes negotiation was partly revealed in comments by Scott Greenstein, SiriusXM’s chief content officer. Greenstein said at a Bank of America conference that the goal is for it to keep Stern, but the deal, if it happens, must make sense for the company. He described a sophisticated process for measuring indicators such as listener hours, ad income, social media hoopla, and the brand value that a person offers to a service or genre.

The speculation that Smith, 26, would not be back was first published by The Sun, a British tabloid owned by Rupert Murdoch, and reported that contract talks had broken down precipitously. The idea gained steam after Stern delayed his return to the studio by six business days and welched on a promise to talk about the issue on his September 2nd show. The Howard Stern Show’s own publicity department has also done a masterful job weaving in this emerging intrigue, ramping up the intrigue as his contract (believed to hover around an astonishing $100 million a year) will run out at the close of 2025.

The Stern Imperative: A Symbiotic Goldenberg: Wingin' It—Israel, Iran and chicken wings

Howard Stern’s rise to stardom as one of the wealthiest people in the media is a tale of shifts in the entertainment business. In the 1980s, he radicalized the radio interview, probing societal taboos, humanizing drag queens and prostitutes, and zealously sparring with perceived enemies—most famously the Federal Communications Commission, which fined his show millions of dollars for indecent material.

His earthbound program was syndicated in 1986, eventually reaching just about every major market in the United States and Canada. It was also featured on a TV show on cable TV, E!, in 1994. The marriage of Stern and satellite radio is inarguable. When The Howard Stern Show debuted on Sirius Satellite Radio in 2006, the service only had 700,000 subscribers; by that year’s end, that figure had grown to more than 6 million, kick-starting the 2008 merger with XM Satellite Radio Holdings Inc. SiriusXM has grown to 33 million subscribers today and has more than 160 million listeners, a testament to the lasting impact of its most storied voice.