Howard Stern is clarifying his employment status.
“I was on vacation and the next thing I know I was in Stephen Colbert Land where I was being thrown off by the FCC somehow,” the shock jock, 71, told host Andy Cohen on the Friday, October 10, episode of Sirius XM’s Andy Cohen Live. “I don’t know whatever it was or because I’m too woke. Too woke? I don’t even know what a woke is. What is woke?”
He added: “The fact that if I’m too woke — the world has turned upside down. I mean, holy s***, the stuff I do and talk about, I don’t even know what that means. But you know what? If it means I’m awakened, God bless.”
Cohen interjected and said that such an approach “might mean that you care about other people.”
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“Yeah, I mean, it’s suddenly not macho to give a f*** about anybody,” Stern said in agreement, before revealing that he was not being fired at all.
The radio show host also clarified how he’ll feel about whatever decision Sirius XM makes in the future regarding his tenure with the company.
“If that works out, great. I love this company. I do,” he explained to Cohen, 57. “When I signed on, I think it was 200,000 subscribers. XM was killing us. And my dream, just like when I used to go to s***** radio stations, ‘Let’s f***ing win.’ And now today, there’s this robust company, and I’m very proud of it. And if I do end up staying with this company, I’m going to take ownership of that.”
In August, multiple outlets reported Stern was getting axed from Sirius XM. Stern did not immediately address the rumors. In September, he tricked listeners into believing he had been replaced by Cohen — and that the latter had renamed his show “Andy 100.”
“I’m minding my own business, enjoying my summer vacation. [A reporter] says that I’ve been fired for being too woke. In light of the Stephen Colbert firing — because the word on Stephen was that it was all part of this merger, and they fired Stephen because he’s too woke — the story then became Howard Stern is fired because he’s too woke,” he explained at the time. “What pisses me off is that now I can’t leave. I’ve been thinking about retiring. Now I can’t.”
SiriusXM exec Scott Greenstein went on to comment on Stern’s future with the company in September.
“So Howard, for all these years and right up until now, is as important a content, single piece of content as we’ve had from the sense of being a lightning rod to get awareness for the service and publicity and all of that,” he said at the Bank of America conference on September 3.
Greenstein continued: “He’s the best interviewer out there, period, bar none. And we’ve always had a series, as all of you know, of renewals. With any talent at that level, you’re always going to have an extended period of negotiations. We’ve been pretty lucky all these years. We’d love them to stay. It certainly has to make sense, but we feel pretty good that we’ve done this before, and we’ll see where it goes.”
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He also noted that a lot of factors, including ad revenue and social media, are considered when Sirius XM makes decisions regarding hiring hosts, firing hosts and choosing to end or continue certain programs.