This looks like Howard’s End.
And it seems even Stern, one-time King of All Media, didn’t see it coming.
As the Daily Mail exclusively reported, the 71-year-old learned his SiriusXM show was headed for cancelation via news alert Tuesday night.
Frantic staff and friends couldn’t reach the one-time shock jock, who only picked up the phone for longtime pal Jimmy Kimmel.
‘First I’m hearing of it,’ was all Stern reportedly said. He was stunned.
And that explains why he’s done: Howard Stern, like so many overpaid, irrelevant fixtures of legacy media, has been out of touch with the average American for decades.
The Stern who once electrified fans and haters for being utterly unafraid to offend — attacking hypocritical celebrities, companies, televangelists, politicians of all stripes and his own bosses with glee — lost his mojo long ago.
Covid and Trump finished him off.
This looks like Howard’s End. And it seems even Howard Stern, one-time King of All Media, didn’t see it coming
As the Daily Mail exclusively reported, the 71-year-old learned his SiriusXM show was headed for cancelation via news alert Tuesday night. Frantic staff and friends couldn’t reach the one-time shock jock, who only picked up the phone for longtime pal Jimmy Kimmel (right)
In December 2020 — the same month his pal Alec Baldwin’s wife was revealed to be a fake Spanish person (not that the new, Hollywood Howie ever made so much as a crack about that) — Stern renewed his contract with SiriusXM for a reported $120 million per year over five years.
Looks like time’s up! Just as it is for Stephen Colbert — who managed to kill off the entire Late Show franchise.
Go woke, go broke.
Oh, and don’t alienate over half the audience while you’re at it.
‘I don’t think [Trump] should be anywhere near the White House,’ Stern said, on-air, in September 2024 — two months before the election, and one month before conducting a fawning, in-person interview with Kamala Harris.
‘I hate the people who vote for him,’ Stern continued. ‘I think they’re stupid. I do.’
And with that statement, he severed whatever trust or affection his dwindling audience retained.
Stern, who grew up middle-class on Long Island, a perennial outsider and champion of the average American — that guy was gone.
He also remained willfully ignorant of the digital lane and competitors such as Joe Rogan, himself a welcoming figure for the millions alienated — rejected, really — by Howard Stern.
‘I don’t know what you could do to get noticed on this YouTube,’ Stern said in 2021 — YouTube, which was well on pace to compete with TV and whose content creators, Rogan and Theo Von among them, were shrewdly used by the Trump campaign to reach undecided voters.
‘Podcasts,’ Stern added. ‘They’re bores. They’re f***ing bores.’
His refusal to move with the times is reflected in the lack of effort he puts into his namesake show.
Howard has barely been back at his midtown NYC studio since lockdown ended. He prefers to broadcast from his metaphorical basement, whether in his $25 million oceanfront mansion in the Hamptons — where he reportedly heard the news of his imminent ousting — or his $65 million compound in Palm Beach.
Again, this is how out-of-touch he is: For putting on a lackluster, unfunny show 3 days a week, with lengthy breaks throughout the year, including the entire summer — pocketing more than $1 million per show — he was shocked, shocked, to find his services no longer needed. Or wanted.
Here was the once brash, brazen and fearless shock jock in April 2021, after lockdown had ended and vaccines were in circulation: ‘Things will never get back to normal. I do not believe the pandemic will ever be over.’
This Stern was unrecognizable from the host who stayed on the air as planes flew into the World Trade Center on September 11.
His worldview and interests have only narrowed, become more narcissistic, germophobic and paranoid, while the digital lane explodes with talent that’s cheaper, fresher and simply more entertaining.
Stern’s fall, while expected, is also huge.
Never again will terrestrial or satellite radio see the likes of him, a monocultural figure who dominated and defined his industry.
Now he goes the way of Stephen Colbert, 61.
My best guess is that Anderson Cooper, 58, CNN’s reportedly $18 million-a-year man, will be next out the door.
Puck reported in June that Cooper’s boss, David Zaslav, is looking to cut costs at the flailing network.
Cooper’s show, which airs at 8pm weekdays, has reportedly been shedding eyeballs in the key 25 to 54-year-old demographic.
Meanwhile, younger host Kaitlan Collins, who makes a reported one-fifth of Cooper’s salary, had the gall to post from her brand-new summer home on Nantucket — as CNN colleagues get the ax, face pay cuts, or take on more work for less money.
Mark my words: Gayle King, 70, CBS’s overpaid morning show host-slash-Oprah appendage, will be out as early as next spring.
King recently signed an extension, reportedly worth up to $15 million, that takes her through next May. But she’s turned CBS Mornings preachy and humorless, losing between 20 to 30 percent in that 25 to 54 demo.
‘The audience doesn’t want woke,’ a CBS source told The New York Post.
Nor do they want a haughty presence who gloats about going to outer space, or having accompanied Oprah to the Bezos-Sanchez wedding, or whose overall vibe is sanctimonious and insufferable.
So Stern’s not the only one, but he is singular in his tenure, the money and ratings he once generated, and his impact on the culture.
The younger Howard would never have predicted he wouldn’t know when to leave.
If only he had listened more closely — the very thing he was once paid so handsomely to do.
