Howard Stern laid off roughly a dozen staffers from his SiriusXM program on Monday, and the cuts arrive alongside a jarring new reality: new episodes will air just once per week. Employees learned of the layoffs during a Monday Zoom call before being sent home with severance packages based on tenure. The show plans to lean on archive material and reruns to fill the rest of the schedule once the change takes effect after Labor Day.
It’s a stunning turn for a program that once defined appointment radio five days a week. Stern signed a new three-year deal with SiriusXM in December, and he described it at the time as offering “more flexibility.” Few outside his inner circle likely expected that flexibility to mean a single new show per week.
So here’s the question worth asking: if that’s all Stern can muster at this point, is it even worth it? He’s the King of All Media. He’s an absolute legend, and nothing about one new show a week changes that. But calling it “The Howard Stern Show” at this point feels like a stretch. If he doesn’t want to create that much content anymore, that’s fine — no one can knock him for the career he’s had. If he wants to ride off into the sunset, then he should just do it. Right now, though, it’s a masquerade.
A Familiar Pattern, Minus the Drama
Cutting back gradually isn’t new for Stern. He stopped hosting five days a week years ago, and he’s gone live less frequently as his career has progressed. Still, this latest reduction lands differently. Last September, rumors swirled that SiriusXM planned to force him out entirely, sparking a “Will he or won’t he” saga that included a prank involving Andy Cohen and a fake takeover of Stern’s channel. Listeners panicked. Shares dipped. Stern eventually confirmed he was staying, and the drama died down.
Given that backdrop, it’s hard to believe SiriusXM is thrilled about dropping down to one day a week so soon after fighting to keep him. Meanwhile, the company has been in the middle of serious belt-tightening, targeting $200 million in annualized savings and trimming staff across multiple departments. Consequently, laying off a dozen more employees tied to Stern’s show fits a broader cost-cutting pattern rather than existing in isolation.
I don’t have insight into what his revamped contract actually entails, and neither does the public. But it’s reasonable to question whether SiriusXM’s leadership is genuinely comfortable with this arrangement, or whether they simply don’t have leverage to push back against one of the platform’s most valuable — and expensive — names.
One Day a Week Isn’t Rare, But Stern Isn’t a Podcaster
Plenty of podcasters release new content once a week, and audiences don’t punish them for it. That model works fine for creators without decades of daily-radio history behind them. Stern, however, built his entire brand on being unavoidable — five mornings a week, unfiltered, unpredictable, and everywhere. Reducing that to a single new episode strips away the very thing that made him must-listen radio in the first place.
Additionally, subscribers who signed up specifically for Stern’s daily presence may not stick around for reruns disguised as programming. SiriusXM has leaned on his gravitational pull for subscriber retention for nearly two decades. Once that pull weakens, the company’s math around his contract gets a lot harder to justify.
What’s long been rumored as the slow fade of Stern’s career appears to have finally arrived. This isn’t retirement, and it isn’t cancellation. It’s something murkier — a show that still carries his name but no longer resembles the show that earned it. At some point, legacy and output have to align, and right now they don’t. This truly does look like the end of The Howard Stern Show as anyone has known it.
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Garrett Searight is Barrett Media’s News Editor, which includes writing daily news stories, features, and opinion columns. He joined Barrett Media in 2022 after a decade leading several radio brands in several formats, as well as a 5-year stint working in local television. In addition to his work with Barrett Media, he is a radio and TV play-by-play broadcaster. Reach out to him at Garrett@BarrettMedia.com.