Howard Stern has been a constant voice on the radio for 50 years. He’s spent the last two decades with SiriusXM after signing a then-groundbreaking $500 million deal. The shock jock returned to the radio after a summer break. Listeners blasted the radio host for the “embarrassing” changes to the show. Keep reading for all the details.
Howard Stern Takes Step Back From Radio Show
Howard Stern signed an extension with SiriusXM in 2025. The Howard Stern Show will remain on the air through at least 2028. But there’s a catch. The new deal included a reduced schedule. The 72-year-old radio host reduced the show from three live weekly shows to just one.
The move also cuts his popular archive channel. Bravo host Andy Cohen’s radio show is replacing Howard Stern’s second radio station. While these changes mean less Howard Stern on the radio, he signed a huge deal with HBO Max. The radio jock’s one live episode began airing on the streaming service on Thursday, September 17.
Monday’s three-hour live radio shows will be edited down to 90 minutes and air on HBO Max on Thursdays. Fans reacted negatively to The Howard Stern Show‘s streaming debut.
Listeners Blast ‘Embarrassing’ Changes To Show
The talk of the summer wasn’t about Howard Stern’s streaming debut. The reduced schedule resulted in a lot of staff getting fired. The mass layoffs led to speculation that the HBO Max show would be a “disaster.” According to fans of the radio show, it was even worse than expected.
Former fans took to Reddit to blast the “embarrassing” parody the Howard Stern Show has become. And they didn’t hold back at all.
- “this show f*cking sucks and needs to go right in the trash. Not half of it. All of it. He is a caricature of himself and essentially everything he used to hate.”
- “I made it ten minutes before realizing there was much more interesting stuff I could watch”
- “he’s become exactly what he used to despise and parody: the over-hyped, do-nothing, zero-effort Oprah Winfrey “mogul” of two media giants… a total borefest. when’s the Howie Book Club going to be announced?”
- “He should have left years ago. Now his embarrassing himself. Less that a shadow of his formal self.”
Several fans were upset that Howard Stern didn’t really address the staff layoffs except to complain about the way it was portrayed in the media. Another complaint was the redundancy of airing Monday’s radio show again on Thursday. The HBO Max show is the same one that already aired on the radio, just shortened to 90 minutes.
An estimated 20 million people listened to Howard Stern at his peak. However, those numbers have dwindled in recent years. Tell us in the comments if you think it’s time for him to retire.
Jennifer Havener grew up in a small town in Upstate New York. She earned her B.A in Writing & Literature from Naropa University in Boulder, Colorado. She always knew watching reality TV shows and soap operas, particularly ‘Days of Our Lives’, would come in handy someday. When she’s not writing, she’s playing with her dogs, Lola and Ruger