siriusxm

HOWARD Stern’s top staffers are asking around for new jobs at SiriusXM, as they believe the show will be canceled in December.

The U.S. Sun can exclusively reveal the private conversations being had at the streaming radio provider, as Stern‘s $100 million contract – which has yet to be renewed – inches closer to an end. 

An eyewitness at SiriusXM’s offices this week claimed they overheard Stern show radio personality Fred Norris pitching himself for a new gig. 

“Fred was walking with another guy at Sirius and said to him, ‘Let me know, because I don’t know what’s going to happen come January, I might be looking for a job,’” the eyewitness claimed. 

Meanwhile, the source was also told that staff members are expecting the show to officially end at the end of the year.  

“After conversations with [Stern show producer] Gary Dell’Abate and others, it sounds like they aren’t expecting to re-sign with Sirius,” the insider said. 

The U.S. Sun reached out to the Howard Stern show for comment.

INSIDE STERN & SIRIUS’ NEGOTIATIONS

Stern has notably been broadcasting from his sprawling Hamptons home since the pandemic, with some occasional exceptions.

As The U.S. Sun was the first to exclusively report, the 71-year-old shock jock and his superiors at SiriusXM were not expected to find common ground when his $100 million-a-year contract concludes this year. 

In August, sources informed The U.S. Sun that Stern’s SiriusXM program seemed to be facing cancellation. 

The satellite broadcaster was unlikely to meet Stern’s financial demands when his current five-year contract expires.

An insider revealed, “Stern’s contract is up in the fall, and while Sirius is planning to make him an offer, they don’t intend for him to take it.

“Sirius and Stern are never going to agree on the money he is going to want. It’s no longer worth the investment.”

The source also noted at the time that SiriusXM was expected to pursue a separate agreement to maintain control of Stern’s extensive show archive.

“But as far as him coming back to doing the show, there’s no way they can keep paying his salary,” they clarified.

Referencing the difficulties within the media sector, the insider remarked, “After you saw what happened with Stephen Colbert, it’s like they just can’t afford to keep him going.”

STERN FINALLY RESPONDS

In September, Stern addressed The U.S. Sun’s report about 45 minutes into his show.

The shock jock had been on an extended summer break, after he blamed a cold for missing the prior week’s show, despite SiriusXM heavily promoting his return and that he would address the speculation that his show was done for. 

Far into his return to the air, Stern addressed The U.S. Sun’s report that his show was headed for cancellation this year.

“Here’s the truth. Sirius XM and my team have been talking about how we go forward in the future,” he stated. 

“They’ve approached me, they’ve sat down with me, like they normally do, and they’re fantastic.”

Stern recounted that SiriusXM executives asked him, “Howard, would you stay? Under what conditions do you want to stay? How often do you want to do a show?”

“And you know, we’ve been talking. We’ve been talking,” he added, confirming that a contract for him to continue had not yet been signed.

The radio icon then read directly from The U.S. Sun’s initial report, appearing to validate its accuracy.

He quoted, “Stern’s contract is up in the fall and while Sirius is planning to make him an offer, they don’t intend for him to take it,” before adding, “Which is weird. Well, fine, whatever. I might not have, but now I have to take it.”

Howard Stern’s Career

Howard Stern has had a prolific radio career, but he’s also had success in film, books and TV.

Stern’s love affair with radio began when he was a student at Boston University, where he worked at the school’s radio station before graduating in 1976.

After college, he had a series of on-air jobs in Hartford, Connecticut, Detroit, Michigan and then Washington D.C., where he met his eventual sidekick Robin Quivers.

It was in D.C. where Stern began honing his shock jock schtick.

They were fired and the pair landed at WNBC in New York City in 1982.

In a few short years at WNBC, Stern butted heads with management and was ultimately axed.

The duo joined WXRK-FM in New York in 1985 and they were there until 2004 when they joined SiriusXM.

Howard has been at SiriusXM since, with his contracts estimated to be between $80 million and a $100 million a year over the last two decades.

He also starred in and was the executive producer of his autobiography and blockbuster movie Private Parts, which debuted in 1997.

He’s also authored several books and was a judge on America’s Got Talent for three seasons.

-By Jessica Finn, Exclusives and Investigations 

SIRIUSXM EXECS WEIGH IN

A week before Stern’s belated return, SiriusXM’s Chief Content Officer, Scott Greenstein, commented at a conference. 

He said that while they would “love for Stern to stay,” nothing was confirmed at that point.

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“It certainly has to make sense, but we feel pretty good that we’ve done this before,” he said, concluding, “We’ll see where it goes.”

Meanwhile, SiriusXM CEO Jennifer Witz also verified they had not finalized a deal with Stern yet, but added she was “confident [they would] get to the right place” with the radio icon.

NEW YORK — Howard Stern, the popular and highly paid radio host, returned to SiriusXM’s airwaves Monday after trolling listeners into thinking he had departed his long-running show.

Stern, 71, who evolved from his shock jock origins to become a respected interviewer, enlisted a seemingly flustered Andy Cohen at the top of “The Howard Stern Show” to pretend to be his successor. “This was supposed to be a cleaner hand off. I’m kind of winging it,” said Cohen.

Stern then came on the air and thanked the Bravo personality, who has his own SiriusXM show and podcast, for agreeing to do the bit. The stunt was the culmination of weeks of promos that promised a big reveal, following swirling speculation that Stern’s show would be canceled. “The tabloids have spoken: Howard Stern fired, canceled,” one promo video said. “Is it really bye-bye Booey?” The speculation grew after Stern postponed his return from a summer break last week.

While he did return Monday, Stern did not announce that he had reached a new contract with SiriusXM. His current deal expires at the end of 2025.

“Here’s the truth: SiriusXM and my team have been talking about how we go forward in the future. They’ve approached me, they’ve sat down with me like they normally do, and they’re fantastic,” Stern said.

Stern joining what was then Sirius Satellite Radio Inc. in 2006 made him one of the highest-paid personalities in broadcasting and was a game-changer for both the company and the nascent satellite radio industry. His importance was highlighted on the SiriusXM homepage — tabs included For You, Music, Talk & Podcasts, Sports and Howard.

SiriusXM in the years after Stern joined has become home to top podcasts “Call Her Daddy,” “SmartLess,” “Freakonomics Radio,” “Last Podcast on the Left,” “99% Invisible” and “Conan O’Brien Needs a Friend” and features such personalities as Trevor Noah, Kevin Hart and Stephen A. Smith.

But SiriusXM’s subscriber base has been slowly contracting, with the company reporting 33 million paid subscribers in the second quarter of 2025, a net loss of 68,000 from the first quarter and 100,000 fewer than the same period in 2024. It is a battling a saturated satellite market and competition from free, ad-supported platforms like Spotify.

Stern extended his contract with SiriusXM twice before, in 2010 and again in 2020 with a five-year, $500 million deal, Forbes reported. He’s recently had newsy and intimate chats with Lady Gaga and Bruce Springsteen.

“He’s been with me and the company going on two decades, and so he’s pretty happy, but he’s also able, like many great artists, to stop whenever he wants,” SiriusXM president and chief content officer Scott Greenstein told The Hollywood Reporter in 2024. “Nobody will ever replace them. We would never try to replace them.”

Stern, who has liked to call himself the King of All Media, rose to national fame in the 1980s during his 20-year stint at the then-WXRK in New York. At its peak, “The Howard Stern Show” was syndicated in 60 markets and drew over 20 million listeners. Stern was lured to satellite radio by the lucrative payday and a lack of censorship, following bruising indecency battles with the Federal Communications Commission and skittish radio executives. His past on-air bits had included parading strippers through his New York studio and persuading the band then known as The Dixie Chicks to reveal intimate details about their sex lives.

His 1997 film “Private Parts” became a box office hit and offered a raw, humorous look at his rise to fame. He has also authored several bestselling books and served as a judge on “America’s Got Talent” from 2012 to 2015.

Kennedy writes for the Associated Press.

NEW YORK — If Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear vaults into national prominence as a Democratic leader, he may one day look back at Thursday as a key step in that direction.

SiriusXM announced that it was giving Beshear’s new podcast a national platform starting this month, along with featuring him in a regular call-in show on its Progress network.

President Trump’s appearances on podcasts were a pivotal media strategy in his successful 2024 Republican campaign. Moving forward, mastering a personal podcast could replace soft-focus biographies or wonky books as a way for politicians to increase their profiles.

Beshear said on NBC’s “Meet the Press” this summer that he will “take a look” at running for president in 2028. California Gov. Gavin Newsom, also in the circle of potential presidential nominees, started his own podcast earlier this year.

Speaking to the anxiety of Americans

In an interview, Beshear said a motivating factor in his own podcast was people who have come up to him, especially during the Trump administration, to talk about their anxieties.

“That’s how Americans feel,” he said. “They feel like the news hits them minute after minute after minute. And it can feel like chaos. It can feel like the world is out of control. With this podcast, we’re trying to help Americans process what we’re going through.”

He’s already done nearly two dozen podcasts, with his audience heavily weighted toward Kentucky residents. His guests have included some potential Democratic presidential rivals, including Maryland Gov. Wes Moore and Minnesota Sen. Amy Klobuchar. Entrepreneur Mark Cuban, former Kentucky basketball coach John Calipari and Kentucky-born actor and comic Steve Zahn have also appeared.

Beshear, the son of a former governor who’s been leading Kentucky since 2019, talks issues himself. Two of his friends, a Republican and a Democrat, are regular guests, and his 16-year-old son helps Dad navigate some youthful lingo.

Newsom attracted attention — some of it negative among Democrats — for interviewing conservative guests Steve Bannon, Michael Savage and Charlie Kirk on his podcast.

“I did disagree with him on certain guests because I don’t like to give oxygen to hate,” Beshear said. “But Gavin is out there really working to communicate with the American people, and he deserves to be commended for it.”

Newsom’s podcast started slowly in the marketplace but has caught fire in recent weeks, his regular audiences jumping from the tens of thousands to the hundreds of thousands, said Paul Riismandel, president of Signal Hill Insights, an audio-focused market research company.

The California governor’s increased visibility, particularly on social media, is likely a factor in the growing popularity of the podcast, Riismandel said. But it’s also a function of how podcasts often catch on: Many tend to be slow burns as audiences discover them, he said.

Learning to master the format of podcasts

Whether ambitious politicians start their own podcasts or not, they’re going to have to be familiar going forward with what makes people successful in the format.

“With a podcast, the audience expects a more unfiltered, authentic kind of conversation and presentation,” Riismandel said. If politicians come across as too controlled, looking for the sort of soundbites that will be broken out in a television appearance, it’s not likely to work, he said. They have to be willing to open up.

“That is something that is probably new for a lot of politicians,” he said, “and new for their handlers.”

Beshear’s first podcast for SiriusXM will feature an interview with House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.), conducted in the company’s New York studio and debuting Sept. 10. The Progress network will air Beshear’s podcasts regularly on Saturdays at 11 a.m. Eastern.

The first live call-in show will be next Tuesday at noon, with Beshear joined by Progress host John Fugelsang.

Beshear stressed that his work for SiriusXM is “not just aimed at a Democratic audience.”

“We’re aiming,” he said, “at an American audience.”

Bauder writes for the Associated Press.