Howard Stern
No, Howard Stern is not dead. He is, however, a long way from the pop culture powerhouse he once was, and appears to have reached the end of his four-decade reign as America’s preeminent radio personality.
HOWARD STERN REMEMBERS OZZIE OSBOURNE
Those of you who weren’t around in the late 1980s and 90s will have no conception of just how big the New York based Howard Stern, the quintessential shock jock (it was he who popularized the term), once was. In 1982-2005, during his years on WNBC and WXRK, it’s been claimed that in the 8 AM drivetime one out of every three cars on any freeway had THE HOWARD STERN SHOW playing on its radio. It was then that he constantly antagonized the FCC (with a “masturbating to Aunt Jemima” crack and a sexually frank 1988 “Christmas Party” broadcast, to name but a couple examples), published two bestselling books, starred in a hit 1997 movie and staged a shockingly successful run for governor of New York in 1994 (dropping out when it looked as if he might actually win).
In 2006 he moved to Sirius—now SiriusXM—satellite radio and his show got even wilder, at least until Stern’s 2010s rebrand, in which he elected to refocus his show on celebrity interviews. Then Covid occurred and things grew downright apocalyptic on the Stern front, with the man taking to conducting his show, with its alleged 90-plus employees, remotely.
Which brings us to today (as of August 2025), and the fact that Howard Stern’s tenure appears to finally be coming to an end. According to one widely shared quote, “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.” This means, effectively, that it’s all over for Mr. Stern.
ADAM SANDLER’S MEMORABLE MOMENTS ON HOWARD STERN
I’ll confess to being a longtime Howard Stern fan. I began listening in the mid-nineties, and until recently I was quite loyal. Obnoxious and disgusting Stern often was/is, but he understands the mechanics of comedy as well as anyone I know of—I’d even go so far as to call him a comedic genius—and stands as one of America’s preeminent truth tellers.
I was among those who switched over to Sirius in 2006 purely for Howard’s channels, and stuck with him even as his show grew increasingly unlistenable. I’m still trying to maintain that loyalty, although doing so is damn hard. Whereas back in the day the HOWARD STERN SHOW was slick, structured and streamlined, it’s become a rambling and formless three-hour slog that generally concludes with the sign-off “that’s enough show for today.” Even the revealing celebrity interviews that Stern has made his lynchpin have tapered off, and the interviewees considerably less prestigious than you’d expect (with his most recent gets being Sarah Jessica Parker and Lars Ulrich).
We shouldn’t be surprised that the online reaction to Stern’s possible end has been a lot of mocking and gloating. This is a reaction, I might add, that transcends political differences, with right-wingers claiming Stern has become too woke (in fact, Stern toned down the show’s political angle considerably after the 2024 election) while lefties are gleefully bringing up instances of his past bad behavior.
CONAN OBRIEN ON HOWARD STERN
I’ll admit to being a bit depressed. Yes, Howard Stern’s time has come and gone, with his show a relic of an earlier time (before podcasts and social media), but there’s a reason he snatched the brass ring that fellow shock jocks like Don Imus and Bubba the Love Sponge missed. Quite simply, in the realm of radio hosts he’s the best there is, even if his recent output makes that difficult to believe.
Here’s another hot take: I don’t believe that Howard Stern ever truly “sold out.” And another: I think his Sirius arc, bleak though it is, has been far more calculated than it might appear.
High School
To expand on the first of those two points, I feel that present-day Howard is the same man he always was. A recent Yahoo! posting claims that “Howard has become a huge manchild baby.” As he himself would likely be the first to ask, when was he not a “huge manchild baby?” A large part of his appeal has always been his honesty, which he directs at himself first and foremost. Stern has always been upfront about his personality flaws and physical shortcomings, being the only man I know of who not only admits to but brags about having a small penis (that’s not to say he doesn’t have an untruthful side, as proven by his 2006 claims about being “cured” of his OCD symptoms, only to admit in his introduction to 2019’s book, HOWARD STERN COMES AGAIN, that he still struggles with them).
The sellout claim appears to be based on a widely held misunderstanding. I and seemingly everyone else have long labored under the misapprehension that the mockery toward celebrity culture displayed by Stern in his pre-Sirius days was based on genuine antipathy, when it seems that in actuality he was simply jealous—or, as a Reddit user put it, “All those years of railing against the kids at the popular table in the lunchroom…He just wanted to be accepted.”
For corroboration let’s go to a 2024 broadcast in which he spoke of meeting Woody Allen. The latter was a longtime target of Stern’s ire, yet upon being greeted by Allen in NYC’s Polo Lounge, he admits that “I fell apart. Any moral stance I might have thought before (was gone).”
As per my point about Stern’s recent demeanor being calculated, I ask you to once again consider the evidence. He’s always been an astute observer of popular trends, proven by the fact that in the early 2010s, after taking advantage of the lack of restrictions afforded by satellite radio to fully explore his dark side (in segments like “It’s Just Wrong,” in which fathers had to answer raunchy questions, and for every one they got wrong remove an article of their daughter’s clothing), he suddenly did an about-face.
At the behest of his newly hired COO Marci Turk, an associate of GETTING THINGS DONE author David Allen (a book and author Stern was known to feverishly promote), all pornographic ephemera and goofy artwork were removed from Howard’s studio and the content toned down (with “It’s Just Wrong” jettisoned altogether). It appeared that, at a time when popular culture was fawning over “edgy” figures like ASSHOLES FINISH FIRST author Tucker Max (remember him?) and “fratire” lit, Stern was able to foresee the “Great Awokening” that overtook the latter part of the decade, and plan accordingly.
Stern also appears to have foreseen his own fate. That he should have retired a decade ago is evident in his current three-day workweek, multiple holidays, summer vacations and in-home studio. These aren’t the preferences of someone who’s terribly eager to work, and that disinterest is reflected in Stern’s declining listenership, which has fallen from a reported 20 million per show to just 125 thousand. I can’t help but suspect that he may have been trying to goad Sirius into firing him, as he would seem, in the words of an unnamed staff member, “content to be out in there in the Hamptons with his celebrity friends…He likes being liked by famous people. That seems more important [to him] than his legacy.”
So Howard Stern is done. That leaves us with the question of who might replace him, the answer to which, in my opinion, is nobody. He was sui generis, a product of a very particular time, place and set of circumstances that have long since passed and are never to be repeated.