{"id":123241,"date":"2025-09-08T16:48:06","date_gmt":"2025-09-08T16:48:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/123241\/"},"modified":"2025-09-08T16:48:06","modified_gmt":"2025-09-08T16:48:06","slug":"howard-stern-remains-at-siriusxm-for-now-denies-firing-rumors","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/123241\/","title":{"rendered":"Howard Stern Remains At SiriusXM For Now, Denies Firing Rumors"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tHoward Stern<\/a> has not been fired from SiriusXM and remains in the midst of negotiations over a new contract there.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tAmid swirling rumors about his retirement or not being renewed at the satellite radio company, Stern cleared the air on Monday and said that he and his team have been talking about a possible new contract at SiriusXM and what that could look like.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cSiriusXM and my team have been talking about how we go forward in the future, they\u2019ve approached me. They\u2019ve sat down with me like they normally do and they\u2019re fantastic,\u201d Stern said. \u201cWe\u2019ve been talking.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tThe rumors have brought out several other suitors for his show, he added, however, he said he is \u201cvery happy at Sirius.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tHe then ran down the headlines, including that he was leaving due to animosity over the hiring of podcaster Alex Cooper. Instead, he said he supported her hiring at SiriusXM, since he owns stock in the company and wants to bring in subscribers.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cI don\u2019t know Alex Cooper,\u201d Stern said. \u201cAnd if she is young and bubbly, God bless her because I\u2019m the opposite.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tIn light of rumors saying that he had been fired, and that it had been because he was \u201ctoo woke,\u201d Stern said there was \u201czero truth\u201d to that. He then read out headlines that spoke to his jealousy about Andy Cohen being promoted at SiriusXM more than him.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cNone of this is going on. None of it is true. Zero truth,\u201d Stern said.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cWhat pisses me off is now I can\u2019t leave,\u201d Stern added. \u201cI\u2019ve been thinking about retiring, now I can\u2019t.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tRumors circulated this summer <\/a>about SiriusXM not wanting to renew Stern\u2019s contract, amid his high price tag and his less frequent broadcasting schedule. Stern, 71, has also been long-rumored to be retiring after his decades-long career as a talk show host. He had promised to \u201creveal all\u201d Sept. 2, but delayed his return until Sept. 8.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tStern\u2019s current five-year deal is up at the end of 2025 and was estimated to be worth $100 million a year. SiriusXM still has the rights to Stern\u2019s back catalog through 2027.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tEach time Stern\u2019s contract has come up for renewal, the brash talk show host has helped stoke the rumor mill by talking about the negotiations and even teasing his possible departure.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tTo that end, Stern\u2019s show started out Monday with the prank of having Cohen take over the airwaves and imply that Stern was fired and that it was now his channel.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cThis is, I know, not the voice that you expected to hear. This is not the voice that you probably wanted to hear, but it is I, Andy Cohen, and this is our first day broadcasting on Channel 100,\u201d Cohen said, joking that it was now Andy 100. \u201cI know that you\u2019re expecting a big announcement from Howard, and this is not how things were meant to go.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tStern eventually got on the mic after a musical intro that included \u201cThis could be the end of the Stern show.\u201d He added that he missed last week because he had been sick after attending Metallica\u2019s show at the Stephen Talkhouse in the Hamptons and did not have a voice. He continues to have a cold, which he noted may affect his broadcasting schedule this week. It also led to many people reaching out asking if he\u2019d been fired.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cIf I get fired, don\u2019t write me,\u201d Stern said.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tSince joining SiriusXM in 2006, Stern\u2019s show has been a staple of the radio giant\u2019s programming slate and been seen as a draw for subscribers (though the company has not quantified the exact size of his listenership). In 2020, Credit Suisse analyst Brian Russ estimated that 15 percent<\/a> of Stern listeners could cancel their SiriusXM subscriptions if he left the company, which at the time meant \u201ca potential subscriber loss of 2.7 million.\u201d <\/p>\n

\n\tA few listeners called in Monday \u2014 one of whom was crying \u2013 saying that they had canceled their subscriptions after the Cohen prank, and then reinstated them. Shares of SiriusXM briefly plummeted in-pre-market trading following Cohen\u2019s statements. <\/p>\n

\n\tThis time, SiriusXM is in the midst of belt-tightening, with the company targeting $200 million of annualized savings in 2025 and undergoing layoffs as part of that. The company has recently pointed to its better management of subscriber churn, but has seen its subscriber numbers slowly decline from around 34 million in 2020 to 33 million in the second quarter of 2025. However, SiriusXM executives had expressed a desire<\/a> to keep him on the air as recently as last week, while noting the deal also has to \u201cmake sense.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Howard Stern has not been fired from SiriusXM and remains in the midst of negotiations over a new…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":123242,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[96,26819,128,56,54,55],"class_list":{"0":"post-123241","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-music","8":"tag-entertainment","9":"tag-howard-stern","10":"tag-music","11":"tag-uk","12":"tag-united-kingdom","13":"tag-unitedkingdom"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/123241","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=123241"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/123241\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/123242"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=123241"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=123241"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=123241"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}