The King of All Media pulled a fast one on listeners on Monday morning (Sept. 8) when he appeared to announce his retirement from afar when he didn’t show up, as promised, following a long summer break. Howard Stern, 71, was originally slated to be back on air last week amid rumors that his nearly two-decade run at SiriusXM might be coming to an end.
He pushed that return back a week with no explanation, and when fans tuned in at 7 a.m. ET on Monday morning they were greeted with Stern fan/friend and fellow SiriusXM voice Andy Cohen seemingly announcing Stern’s channel had been re-branded as “Andy 100.” Cohen leaned into the bit, claiming he was “winging it” amid a “surreal” morning when he was tapped to replace the radio legend.
Eagle-eared Stern listeners, however, sniffed out the bit right away, and sure enough, after about 15 minutes of agita over the alleged end of an era, Stern was back behind the mic following the airing of an operatic version of his traditional intro music. With his familiar “hey now,” Stern kicked off the show around 7:16 a.m., thanking Cohen for his “little bit.”
“Lest anyone think that was real, that was all masterminded by me,” a satisfied Stern said of the fakeout that briefly ensnared some major media outlets into reporting the end of his radio reign as he took calls from irritated fans who feared the worst, but suspected it was all a ruse.
“Everything you’ve been reading in the paper about me or about Robin is completely false,” Stern said as longtime sidekick Robin Quivers asked if the delay in returning was due to an alleged roadblock in Stern renewing his contract. “Last week I was all set to come on and I made the mistake of going the last week of my vacation and actually interacting with people and I got so sick. I thought I had COVID,” said Stern, who has frequently discussed his fear of getting sick since the pandemic and has made a bit of talking about how he tries to avoid interacting other people at all costs.
The “cold that won’t go away” has laid him low, he said, noting that he had no voice at all last week and that he told his wife Beth on Sunday night (Sept. 7) that he thought he was dying after attending a Maren Morris charity concert at Stephen Talkhouse in Amagansett, N.Y. last week. “I was just getting so f–king annoyed with everyone writing me asking me if I was okay because I’d been fired. And I’m like, ‘what a d–k’ thing,’” Stern lamented, saying if he was getting fired — which he was adamant he was not — he didn’t want to discuss it with anyone.
“Am I okay? If I got fired I’m not okay, that’s a s–tty way to go out,” Stern said of the swirling, unsubstantiated rumors that he’d been booted from SiriusXM. As he was battling the illness, Stern said he was hit by a wave of texts last week from people asking if the rumors were true after a summer of what he said were false rumors.
Going back to late July, Stern recalled getting a call from his team about a tabloid report claiming that Quivers had died. After reaching out to his longtime radio partner Quivers to confirm that the reports were false, Stern said he was confronted with another rumor the following week that he’d allegedly been fired from SiriusXM for being too “woke” in the wake of the new that Stephen Colbert’s Late Show will go off the air next year due to reported financial reasons.
“The story then became ‘Howard Stern is fired because he’s too woke,’” Stern said, claiming to be confused about what “woke” even means. “If I’m woke, okay who gives a f–k?… Sirius employs a lot of woke people and a lot of right-wingers too.” Stern said there was “zero truth” to the rumors about his show’s alleged cancellation before playing a montage of news headlines full of speculation and innuendo about everything from his alleged wokeness to his “fake” hair and fear of highly compensated podcasters.
“What pisses me off is now I can’t leave,” Stern said, admitting that he’d been considering retiring lately. “Now I can’t because then they’ll say I got pushed out, so I’ll be back. F–k you.” He said that his team and SiriusXM have been talking over the summer about the future of the show and that “they’ve approached me, they’ve sat down with me like they normally do and they’re fantastic.”
After more than 30 years on terrestrial radio, Stern signed with Sirius in 2004 — before its merger with XM — debuting in January 2006. The longtime talker who works a Monday-Wednesday schedule, took off the entire summer, which led to a swirl of rumors about his future.
This story is updating…
