Howard Stern: Probably Not the Final Listen

If you were looking for a writing prompt on Howard Stern, the last 45 minutes of his SiriusXM show on August 6 couldn’t have been more helpful. A little earlier, Stern had broken into a show of reruns to go live and was interviewing Metallica’s Lars Ulrich about SXM’s new Maximum Metallica channel, which launches Aug. 29. The day before, the band plays a free show for subscribers at a small venue in the Hamptons. Over the course of the remaining 20-25 minutes of the interview that I heard:

• Stern asked Ulrich if he had learned to hit the post on song intros.
• Stern asked if Ulrich had picked out a jock name. Would he be Lars the Love Sponge? Cousin Larsie? (Stern added a quick “yeee” to confirm that he was indeed still mocking WABC New York legend Cousin Brucie after all these years.)
• The jock-name discussion somehow led to a discussion about how both Stern and Ulrich thought Sade’s first album was great, and how Stern had once had sex to it.
• Stern being excited about the Hamptons concert, especially because it will take place earlier in the day and he is no longer staying out late for shows.
• Ulrich being thrilled that Metallica had joined SXM’s roster of artist channels — Springsteen, the Beatles, Pearl Jam, Phish, and more. 
• Stern asked about Metallica playing the Las Vegas Sphere. Ulrich wants to; it’s still in negotiations.
• Stern wondered if Metallica would play the Super Bowl next year, especially on the band’s Bay Area home turf of San Francisco. “F*** yeah, of course we would,” Ulrich said, but he hasn’t been asked.  Stern volunteered in his capacity “as King of all Media” to “talk to some people” on the band’s behalf.
• Lars thanked Stern for coming in from vacation. Howard says he wasn’t interrupting much of anything. 

After Ulrich left:

• Howard reminded listeners that after this show, he’ll be back live on Sept. 2. He talked about celebrating the SXM show’s 20-year anniversary and asked, “is it possible?” that it had really been that long.
• Team member Richard Christy volunteered what act he would perform on Stern for those Metallica tickets. Stern quipped that what he most wants is for him to bathe.
• Stern talked about his Ozzy Osbourne memories, which, he said, included suggesting that Ozzy and Sharon Osbourne do a reality show before it finally happened and introducing Ozzy to Paul McCartney in his show’s green room.
• Stern took two callers. Marianne from Brooklyn wanted Stern to come back to perk up her “shitty summer.” Another caller first fawned over Stern (“the King! the King!”), then talked about his collection of guitar picks, including from Metallica guitarist James Hetfield. He’s hoping that Stern will give him one of the picks that have been made up for his own show because “it’s just going into storage anyway.” 

There were, in other words, plenty of Stern’s greatest hits. With Ulrich, you heard “Stern the shockjock” supplemented (but never fully supplanted) by the “Stern, our new dean of interviewers” mantle that admirers have given him in recent years. If you were less enamored, you might also say it felt like any heritage morning show that has settled in a place of being not quite what it once was, but still too big to replace. Adding another major artist channel may be SXM’s favorite listener recruitment tactic, but it’s not a succession plan.  

What Stern and SXM want for their future together has been the topic of speculation for ages, but on Tuesday a report in the U.S. Sun tried to recast that discussion in Stephen Colbert terms by claiming that Stern will soon be “cancelled” as a result of having become too political and losing subscribers. That prompted a number of “good riddance” Facebook comments, although they had to compete with the fabricated posting of McCartney “visiting” Phil Collins. (There were, notably, no politics in the admittedly tiny 45-minute sample I heard.)

When the then-Sirius Satellite Radio made its Stern deal in 2004, satellite radio had three million subscribers. Now, even among headlines about how SXM subscribers are declining, satellite radio has 33 million subscribers.

When Stern was hired in 2004, I spent months fielding press calls from journalists who despised broadcast radio and appreciated satellite’s deep musical variety. Many were hoping that Stern on satellite would finally be the end of “terrestrial radio.” My contrarian view at the time was that it was proof that “deeper music” wasn’t enough of a franchise and instead what satellite needed was something from (relatively) mainstream radio.

In the last 20 years, SXM has become less anti-radio and more radio’s premium level. If Stern is still razzing Brucie, the latter’s stint with SXM showed them more to be brothers-in-arms. Having diluted and repositioned (but not destroyed) “terrestrial radio,” SXM now faces its own similar challenges from DSPs, although it has successfully become our No. 2 podcast network. I’m still of the belief that SXM and broadcasters could flex by positioning “radio” as one entity with a greater Share of Ear, especially if you considered their podcast reach.

In the years after Stern/satellite, the new national celebrity DJ was Ryan Seacrest, friendly and more descended from that “hitting the post” tradition. Many felt that Stern decreased his own profile by siloing himself at SXM. Yet, Seacrest’s spread was very much made possible by the “better than your local DJ” thinking that Stern had helped promote among owners. Now, the Stern-driven notion that content is more important than form is certainly dominant in radio thinking at this moment, with its renewed emphasis on personality.

There’s also a lot of shockjock in today’s politics, and not just in the way that Stern’s detractors see it. Stern had already proven that funny forgave many sins, although it was more the Greaseman’s 1986 Martin Luther King Jr. holiday remarks that led broadcasters to decide that most outrage was survivable, or that the devotion of 10% of the audience was enough to be No. 1 in the ratings, regardless of what the other 90% thought. 

For 45 years, what many have valued in radio, rap (consider Eminem), and comedy is “sick burn, bro!” Eventually, we saw that take hold as a political strategy as well. In 2024, Stern was outspoken enough to anger those who disagreed with him, but neither he nor Eminem landed many blows in the discourse that went with “the Podcast Election.” 

It is certainly possible that a 71-year-old who no longer exactly produces daily radio anyway would naturally decide to move on. It’s possible to imagine a different scenario as well. Over the years, Stern fans have noted happily that any setbacks — bad ratings or bad publicity — have spurred him to come back even angrier and more scathing. Whether we get that Howard, the statesman/interviewer Howard, or the one in the middle is something we’ll be watching on September 2.

UPDATE: Since Stern’s promise to return last week, Sirius XM has begun further exploiting the controversies to build excitement for the Sept. 2 return, according to the Hollywood Reporter. In the intervening days, it’s been a little chilling to see how uncritically last week’s reports have been repeated by other outlets, but that probably shouldn’t be a surprise in this day and age.

I asked Facebook friends about Stern last week. The initial question, whether they considered themselves Team Stern or Team Mainstream Radio, was, as the reports spread, upstaged by other comments that revealed how many broadcasters have negative feelings about Stern that go beyond his politics. Their comments are definitely worth checking out.