\n<\/p>\n
\n\tTaking on the Fleet Street rumor mill isn\u2019t easy, but it appears SiriusXM and Howard Stern are giving it a shot.<\/p>\n
\n\tIn the lead-up to Stern\u2019s next contract talks with the satellite radio giant \u2014 his five-year deal was estimated to be worth $100 million a year and is up at the end of 2025 \u2014 a familiar refrain of \u201cIs this it for Howard this time?\u201d has echoed a bit louder given his age, 71, and this transitional media moment (podcasts are flooding the zone, and also becoming the new TV, too). <\/p>\n
\n\tThis time it was The Sun<\/em>, with it\u2019s Aug. 5 air quote \u201cto be canceled\u201d headline, that sent a reminder that it\u2019s once again negotiations time between \u201cKing of All Media\u201d and his home for the past two decades. The News Corp. paper, citing an insider that contradicted its own headline, said that Sirius would be offering Stern a new deal but the two parties are \u201cnever going to meet on the money.\u201d <\/p>\n \n\tThe line reads like a \u201cwork the refs\u201d blind quote \u2014 it puts both Stern and SiriusXM on notice that this could be a breaking point \u2014 while also being fed into the media ecosystem with plenty of time on the clock to reach a new deal before the host\u2019s contract is up. This time, unlike prior negotiation dramas, the wild card is which side may want to walk this time, at least that may be the tabloid\u2019s premise. It pages the lawyers and dealmakers for both sides to get serious, or not. <\/p>\n \n\tWhile it seems unlikely that SiriusXM is looking to shed itself of its most recognizable asset in a tough moment for the radio giant \u2014 its consumer-facing app underperformed and its been stuck at around 30 million subscribers for a few years while navigating the rise of a podcast-driven era that has threatened its walled garden \u2014 it doesn\u2019t seem out of realm of possibility that the company is looking for Stern to take a home team discount this time.<\/p>\n \n\tIn any case, on Wednesday, a promo began running on SiriusXM leaning in to the drama. \u201cThe tabloids have spoken: Howard Stern fired, canceled, is it really \u2018Bye-Bye Booey\u2019? Chaos is swirling at The Howard Stern Show<\/em>,\u201d intoned a movie trailer-ready narrator in the ad running on SiriusXM. \u201cDid staffers talk to the press? Are writers withholding their best jokes? Nobody knows what\u2019s going on or who to trust.\u201d<\/p>\n \n\tNaturally, the promo is a set up for Stern himself. \u201cNow we can reveal all the questions will be answered, all the truths will be told by the one man truly on the inside,\u201d movie trailer narrator said on SiriusXM\u2019s airwaves. \u201cHoward Stern will speak Tuesday September 2.\u201d Well played.<\/p>\n \n\tAnd publicly SiriusXM executives, who are asked about Stern nearly every chance there\u2019s a media press availability, keep pointing to him as unique talent while also ushering new stars like Alex Cooper, Stephen A. Smith, Trevor Noah and the\u00a0Smartless<\/em>\u00a0crew. (They\u2019re also in the midst of belt-tightening. They company is dealing with reduced advertising revenue \u2014 down 2 percent year-over-year \u2014 and it also cut its tech and product workforce by 10 percent in order to \u201coperate more nimbly,\u201d CFO Thomas Barry said on July 31.)<\/p>\n \n\tBut that doesn\u2019t mean keeping Howard Stern is a deal-breaker. \u201cHe\u2019s been with me and the company going on two decades, and so he\u2019s pretty happy, but he\u2019s also able, like many great artists, to stop whenever he wants,\u201d chief content officer Scott Greenstein told The Hollywood Reporter<\/em> last year of Stern. \u201cNobody will ever replace them. We would never try to replace them. It\u2019s not what is even appropriate, but even practical. What you always want to do in anything, whether it\u2019s a sports team or a media company, you want to have a great bench of talent that have their own identity.\u201d<\/p><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Taking on the Fleet Street rumor mill isn\u2019t easy, but it appears SiriusXM and Howard Stern are giving it a shot. In the lead-up to Stern\u2019s next contract talks with the satellite radio giant \u2014 his five-year deal was estimated to be worth $100 million a year and is up at the end of 2025<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":15509,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[54],"tags":[9075,6407,9073,9072,9074,9071],"class_list":{"0":"post-15508","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-entertainment","8":"tag-demise","9":"tag-howard","10":"tag-mill","11":"tag-rumor","12":"tag-siriusxm","13":"tag-stern"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15508","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=15508"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15508\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/15509"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=15508"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=15508"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=15508"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}