In August 2025, a rumor spread that radio host Howard Stern's long-running show was being canceled after many decades on the airwaves. According to gossip site The Sun the show, which aired on SiriusXM for around 20 years, was set to be canceled in late 2025 after the end of Stern's purported $100 million contract.
Sports and entertainment website Barstool Sports reported that Stern's politics may have influenced his show's purported cancellation: "[He] certainly didn't do himself any favors by demonizing the majority of the country who developed legitimate concerns about the efficacy, the risks, and the need for the Covid vaccines."
A Facebook post claimed such cancellations were happening to "anti-Trump" hosts like Stern:
(Facebook user David J Harris Jr.)
However, we have no publicly available confirmation that "The Howard Stern Show" is set to be canceled, even though rumors of Stern's retirement have persisted since late 2024. Stern and SiriusXM have not publicly commented on the matter. As such, we are unable to confirm whether the rumor is true.
We reached out to Stern's team and SiriusXM and will update this post if we get more information.
As of Aug. 7, 2025, Stern has not posted publicly on his social media accounts about this rumor, nor has his show's Instagram page made any allusion to the end of the program. Stern's cohost, Robin Quivers, has not commented on the rumors on her Instagram page.
According to The Hollywood Reporter, Stern, 71, has a contract with SiriusXM until the end of 2025, when it will be up for renewal.
In October 2024, The Hollywood Reporter published a story surrounding unconfirmed rumors of his retirement.
At the time, Scott Greenstein, chief content officer at SiriusXM, said he had not heard from Stern about wanting to retire:
He's been with me and the company going on two decades, and so he's pretty happy, but he's also able, like many great artists, to stop whenever he wants. Nobody will ever replace them. We would never try to replace them. It's not what is even appropriate, but even practical.
Greenstein added that even if Stern retired, SiriusXM would still own his library of content for a number of years.
U.S. President Donald Trump also commented on the rumor. Trump had been on Stern's show a number of times over the years but criticized his politics in August 2025 after hearing of the alleged cancellation:
Uh, Howard Stern … it's a name I haven't heard. … I used to do his show, used to have fun, but I haven't heard that name in a long time. What happened? He got terminated? … You know when he went down? … Before … when he endorsed Hillary Clinton, he lost his audience. People said, "Give me a break." He went down when he endorsed Hillary Clinton.
Stern has said he supported Clinton in the 2016 presidential election but admitted bringing Trump onto his show helped him win the presidency:
I wanted to see Hillary Clinton win. The way I helped Donald was I let him come on and be a personality. Whether you liked him or not, people related to him as a human being. I wanted to do that for Hillary.
On Aug. 6, 2025, Stern commented on his schedule in an apparent surprise episode, reminding listeners that he was scheduled to be on vacation until after Labor Day in early September. "We will back though, very soon," he said near the end of his episode. "We'll be back on the air, live. I've been refueling, so to speak."
We have frequently reported on statements Trump made during his appearances on Stern's show, including bragging about going into the dressing rooms of beauty-pageant contestants and jokingly agreeing about being called a sexual predator. We have also reported on the false satirical news claim of Stern losing nearly 1 million subscribers after his interview with former Vice President Kamala Harris.