The future of Howard Stern’s eponymous radio show with Sirius XM is in jeopardy as its $500 million contract nears its end.
“Stern’s contract is up in the fall and while Sirius is planning to make him an offer, they don’t intend for him to take it,” an insider told the US Sun Tuesday.
“Sirius and Stern are never going to meet on the money he is going to want. It’s no longer worth the investment,” the source claimed, adding that Sirius may bargain for Stern’s library.
“But as far as him coming back to doing the show, there’s no way they can keep paying his salary. After you saw what happened with Stephen Colbert, it’s like they just can’t afford to keep him going.”
A second source told the outlet that Stern, who became a hard-line Democrat and severed his relationship with President Trump, may not get a “good offer” because of the “political climate.”
Another insider told the Daily Mail that the media personality, 71, “may do a 1-2 year contract if they can meet him where he wants financially” so he doesn’t “pull the plug” on his employees so abruptly.
A separate source told the outlet that Stern “will likely sell his catalog of shows to replay” on channels Howard 100 and Howard 101.
Page Six has reached out to Sirius XM and Stern for comment, but did not immediately hear back.
Stern launched the second version of “The Howard Stern Show” on SiriusXM in 2006.
Over the years, Stern’s controversial show decreased from millions of listeners a day to a reported 125,000.
Additionally, he has mostly recorded from his home over the past five years due to fears of contracting COVID-19.
In 2023, Stern, who was previously a right-wing conservative, slammed claims that he was “not good anymore” because he’s “woke.”
“By the way, I kind of take that as a compliment, that I’m woke,” he fired back on his radio show at the time.
“I’ll tell you how I feel about it. To me the opposite of woke, is being asleep. And if woke means I can’t get behind Trump, which is what I think it means, or that I support people who want to be transgender or I’m for the vaccine, dude, call me woke as you f–king want.”
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