SiriusXM will cancel The Howard Stern Show after nearly two decades, as Stern’s lucrative five-year contract nears its fall expiration. Industry insiders say the satellite radio giant is unwilling to meet Stern’s financial demands going forward. Since moving to satellite radio 21 years ago, Stern has reportedly earned up to $2.1 billion.
The announcement comes shortly after Stephen Colbert’s cancellation — officially for similar financial reasons. But critics argue both exits are tied to a deeper cause: their long-running, outspoken criticism of President Donald Trump.
Though Stern once maintained a friendly rapport with Trump during their New York years, he turned sharply against him after Trump entered politics. That shift mirrored Stern’s broader transformation from politically incorrect shock jock to a celebrity interviewer with a clear ideological tilt.
By the time of last year’s fawning interview with then-President Joe Biden — which recounted Biden’s career, including his debunked claims of civil rights activism — Stern’s pivot to liberal media figure was complete. The interview fell flat with the narrow slice of persuadable voters who typically decide presidential elections.
Yet the outrageous stunts that once made him a lightning rod for controversy never got him fired. Ironically, it may have been his late-career moralizing that finally did.
As Barstool Sports’ Jerry Thornton noted, Stern’s failure to stay culturally relevant — and his decision to become a moral busybody — contributed to his decline as much as anything else:
Howard Stern became boring.
I mean, tediously, ponderously, mind-numbingly boring. Flipping from his current shows on Howard 100 to his vintage material on Howard 101 is jarring. You go from him kissing up to some D-list musician about his craft and his process to the Whack Pack circa 1999, and it’s just surfacing too fast while scuba diving. You could get physically injured from the sudden change in pressure. I’ll never forget being at my old dead-end day job listening to a Stern guest who could queef on command. He had her with a microphone in her crotch queefing along to “Flight of the Bumblebee.” Co-workers in the next room had to come in and do a well-being check on me because I was laughing so hard I couldn’t breathe.
But in less than 30 years, he went from that insane, outrageous, genius comedy to demanding people get Covid shots because he’s scared of the virus and doing PR work for celebrities like he’s a host on Access Hollywood.
Nobody, but nobody, summed Stern’s demise better than Artie Lange. How he became the very thing he made a career out of burning to the ground. “I think sometimes I stabbed myself and died, and woke up in a world where Howard Stern likes Ellen Degeneres’ dancing. … He has her on the show and kisses her ass, and tells her he looks forward to the dancing. … Nobody changes like this. It would be like Hitler running a Temple.”
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