Howard Stern has signed a new five-year contract with SiriusXM, reportedly worth hundreds of millions of dollars. The 66-year-old radio host and general media personality has had a professional relationship with SiriusXM for 15 years and is currently finishing out a contract that some estimates say could already be worth as much as $100 million annually. Stern has long been a proponent of satellite radio, becoming in recent years one of the medium’s most staunch defenders.
Since the late 1980s, Stern has been one of the definitive voices in American radio. The Howard Stern Show became nationally syndicated in 1986 and continued up until 2005 when Stern quit terrestrial radio and moved to SiriusXM. He has frequently been as famous for his controversies as for his accomplishments, constantly being fined by the FCC through his early career for content declared indecent. In addition to his work in radio, Stern is a New York Times bestselling author, and appeared as a judge on America’s Got Talent from 2012 to 2015.
Stern has now renewed his massively successful show for another five years with SiriusXM. Given the huge amounts of money estimated for his current contract, rumors for the new deal say it could be for as much $120 million per year. “I’ve been proven right about satellite radio over and over again,” Stern said on his radio show Tuesday, per THR. “With this contract renewal, I can’t wait to see what else I’ll be right about. Certainly, I have a lot more to say about Metamucil crackers and stepmom porn. Plus, now that I can work from home, I simply don’t have an excuse to quit.”
Despite numerous evolutions in the world of radio broadcast over the past 35 years – perhaps most notable recently being the explosion of podcasting as a preferred format of audio entertainment – Stern has always maintained a level of relevance. His various writings and TV and film appearances through the past 20 years in particular have spread his celebrity to audiences outside his core listeners, while his consistency on The Howard Stern Show has kept him a mainstay in radio. Given the form’s diminished presence as a major media method, there are few figures remaining who can contest his dominance.
That’s not to say that Stern hasn’t adapted with the times. His programming has become more measured as he’s aged, holding onto the crude style that made him famous while also attempting to add a heightened level of respectability to his image and content. It should be interesting to see how that content continues to evolve over the next five years with SiriusXM.
Source: THR
Originally from https://screenrant.com/howard-stern-sirius-xm-5-year-deal/