SiriusXM Has Canceled 'The Howard Stern Show'

CBS Photo Archive. Getty Images.

Of all the photos I could've selected to start a post about Howard Stern, this one seems the most appropriate given both media giants pictured in it are both about to be out of a job:

Now both Stephen Colbert and Stern will be allowed to serve out the remainder of their contracts, but they won't be renewed. Two of the highest paid performers in two of the highest profile positions in media. Colbert with an annual budget of $100 million. And Stern is rumored to have made $120 million since 2020, and as much as $2.1 billion since he first switched to satellite radio with a groundbreaking deal in 2004. And now both have been unceremoniously fired like they're Chevy Chase in 1993. 

This news, coming so soon after Colbert's announcement, makes it virtually impossible to conclude anything other than this was done for the same reason. Because both have spent the better part of the last 10 years or so - almost from the minute Donald Trump came down the golden escalator - alienating half of the country. That's certainly the conclusion the center-right has reached:

And he certainly didn't do himself any favors by demonizing the majority of the country who developed legitimate concerns about the efficacy, the risks, and the need for the Covid vaccines:

And they have a point. When you're bosses are investing hundreds of millions annually into your show, they're not doing so hoping you'll pander to one particular end of the political spectrum. They're trying to sell ads to the broadest possible audience, not fund your vanity project or watch you do tons of heavy lifting trying to drag a clearly diminished President across the reelection finish line:

… throughout the years. How Joe met Jill. Biden's civil rights activism (which Biden has previously admitted never happened). Amtrak Joe. Stern went through his notes and hit all of the fiction. 

Stern reserved ten minutes at the end to reciting all the hoaxes about Trump. Fine people hoax. Suckers and losers. He hit all of them. 

It is one of the most pathetic interviews in history, followed closely by his interview with Kamala a couple months later.

Look, getting an interview with the sitting President is a legitimate use of your airwaves. He'd have been crazy not to take the opportunity. But there are plenty of outlets for that kind of content without having pay for a SiriusXM subscription. And fawning interviews with politicians was never what Stern's listeners tuned into him for. 

That to me is the real reason Stern is out of a job. After decades of getting fined by the FCC, protested against, threatened with boycotts, ripped to shreds for some truly outrageous moments. For instance:

And talking about how "good looking" the high school girls fleeing the Columbine shooting were:

… he finally committed the one unpardonable sin in broadcasting.

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." 

And yet, Stern did it. The ultimate career 180 turn. From putting porn stars on a Sybian to being a sychophant. From being the voice in the ears of every New York long-haul trucker and Manhattan cabbie to becoming Howie Hamptons and wanting to be accepted by the beautiful people he used to hilariously nuke from orbit to the delight of his massive audience. 

I listened to Stern a couple of years ago on Conan O'Brien's podcast and he explained his conversion from comedian to celebrity sycophant in detail. How he just hated who he was. How he felt like his comedy was hurting people and he didn't want that any more, so he reached out to people like Rosie O'Donnell in particular and apologized to her for all the jokes at her expense. It all sounded like a secular sort of religious conversion. Which Artie and virtually anyone else in Howard's orbit will blame on his second wife, Beth Ostrosky Stern, whom he put in charge of his show almost as soon as they got married. She took over, got the big office that producer Gary Dell'Abate had always been denied, and they were all told to answer to her. With the result being the pedestrian, montonous radio it is today. 

The prime example of that shift was the leaked video of a staff meeting he held in 2013, berating his employees and demanding less in terms of funny radio, and more in terms of booking guests with books, movies, and albums to promote:

The Stern in front of that PowerPoint presentation was unrecognizable to anyone who remembered his Channel 9 show where he dangled hot dogs from fishing rods for bikini models to eat. Or the times he'd pay fathers to take their adult daughters' clothes off live in studio.

Which is all well and good for Howard Stern. Just not for the millions of people who got bored years ago and dipped out of his forgettable show because they have thousands of other options. So while SiriusXM might be sucking up to Trump the way CBS is being accused of after firing Colbert, both cases are much more just good business decisions. 

The King of All Media is dead. Long live the King.