In mid-July, a report claimed that SiriusXM’s “The Howard Stern Show” had laid off a dozen staffers as the one-time radio shock jock prepared to scale back to just one show per week.
While the reports of those firings have yet to be officially confirmed, on Monday, August 31, SiriusXM confirmed that Howard Stern would be stepping back when his show resumed in September, and would now be producing just one show each week.
A New Streaming Deal
The 72-year-old Stern, who re-upped his deal with SiriusXM for three more years in December 2025, will be returning to the satellite radio airwaves on September 14 after his annual summer hiatus.
According to The Hollywood Reporter, Stern’s single weekly show will also be adapted into a streamable television episode for HBO Max, which will include “extras.”
“The Howard Stern Show on HBO Max” will make its debut on the streamer on September 17, with subsequent episodes arriving each Thursday.
‘No One Like Howard’
“There’s simply no one like Howard, and the start of his new season is another exciting chapter in an extraordinary run,” Scott Greenstein, SiriusXM’s president and chief content officer, declared in a statement to THR.
“For more than two decades at SiriusXM, he’s continued to evolve, surprise audiences and deliver the kind of conversations and moments that only Howard can,” Greenstein continued. “We are proud that Howard chose to continue with SiriusXM through 2028 for his exclusive live show and deep library of classic Howard, and that Howard, HBO Max and SiriusXM have now teamed up to create a compelling new video version of his show.”
Pranking the Press
Last summer, rumors were rife that Stern had been fired by SiriusXM amid contract negotiations that had been dragging on.
Stern and his staff neither confirmed nor denied the reports, but on the day his show was scheduled to return, listeners heard another SiriusXM host, Andy Cohen, instead of Stern.
Cohen told listeners that Stern and SiriusXM could not come to an agreement; instead, Stern’s Howard 100 channel had been renamed Andy 100, and would feature Cohen’s Radio Andy show instead.
Outraged fans discovered the whole thing was actually a prank, engineered by Stern and his staff.
However, when Stern did return he revealed that he’d be reducing his workload to just two shows per week, having already scaled back what had initially been five days per week to just three.
A New Lineup
GettyNow that Stern will only be producing one new show each week, his second channel, Howard 101, has been dropped from the SiriusXM lineup. Howard 101 featured repackaged vintage content spanning the entirety of Stern’s entire broadcast career.
Cohen’s Randy Andy will be moving to Channel 101 from his current position at Channel 102.
Per THR, when Stern returns on September 14, he is expected to debut a new lineup for Howard 100.
This will include “Wrap Up Wednesday,” described as “an expanded version” of the existing “Wrap Up Show,” hosted by longtime producer Gary “Bababooey” Dell’Abate and Jon Hein.
Meanwhile, the Howard Stern section of the SiriusXM app will be expanding to include a “Howard Stern Decades” feature that will allow fans to access content from the ’80s, ’90s, ’00s and ’10s.
