The stations ratings guy was explaining the squishy reality of its newest star.

The average Howard Stern fan listens an hour twenty minutes, the numbers man told program director Pig Vomit. The average Stern hater listens for 2 1/2 hours a day.

If they hate him, Pig Vomit asked, growing loud and exasperated, why do they listen?

That scene, of course from 1997 HowardStern biopicPrivate Parts(Paul Giamatti forever), offers just a taste of the innovations Stern has ushered in over a 45-year career in radio. He has seemed as available as air, as longstandingas that set of lawn chairs, for so long that you can forget the novel twists that made him that way. In addition to hatewatching, Stern ushered in the envelope-pushing ensemble that soon became an FM morning-show staple, the loose hang now the calling card of podcasters, the viral moment that presaged Internet culture, the personal-confessional style that would sweep through talk-television journalism, and the candid sex chatter now common, well, everywhere. Oh, and he was a TV pioneer, with a televised simulcast of the show in the New York market in the early 90s and pay-per-view specials that in retrospect look like nothing less than proto-streaming specialized video content that believed that just because something wasnt for everybody doesnt mean that somebody wouldnt pony up for it.

All this could now be coming to an end with word that Sterns show on SiriusXM could get scrapped, as tabloid rumors are fedby a new promo running on Sirius suggesting the host will reveal all right after Labor Day.

The very fact that hes here is itself a sign of Sterns pioneerism, having ditched terrestrial radio and its FCC-flavored friction (which, lets face it, helped his career more than hurt it) nearly 20 years ago to join a digital-content land-rush that many other entertainers would soon follow.

Stern is, as his quinquennial tradition, about to enter a contract negotiation he may not want to be in. He has threatened to call it a day many times before, and this time, at 71, he may actuallymean it. (The death of his longtime agent Don Buchwald last year doesnt help the process.)

Also, for the first time ever, SiriusXM might finallymean it,evaluating what a show that likely retains a few million subscribers is worth and whether its the reported $100 million they pay Stern annually. This could all end up a tempest in a teapot with a re-up and a hometown discount. Or it could mean an already reduced schedule, often broadcast from Sterns home in Southampton, will be slashed further or disappear entirely as Stern retires or, less likely, migrates to Spotify or Netflix.

Whatever happens, the moment feels new. Even the possibility of Stern going away is a signal of how things have changed for the iconoclast.And if he stays, hell be facing an era where his all-purpose media stardom has been diminished.

One part of the narrative is that Stern is past his prime, lapped by the very people whose stage he set. Shock-jockery is funny like that. The more successful you are, the more irrelevant you can become. It happened to Madonna, surpassed by Gaga and then Beyonc in the showmanship-as-feminism department, and by Taylor Swift in the self-mythologizing department, all of which made the actual still-touring Madonna at best a curiosity or nostalgia play. (About the only flamboyant 80s New York-tabloid figure it didnt happen to is the person sitting in the West Wing, but thats a column for another day.)

And it could happen with Stern, now made irrelevant by the very people whose careers he enabled. Most conspicuously by Alex Cooper, the 30-year-oldCall Her Daddypodcaster and rising Sirius star who also talks freely about sex and also parlays an intimate style into some very famous and disarmed guest interviews, capturing some of the young devoted audience that Stern long ago did. In October my colleague James Hibberd asked Cooper what she thought of taking the mantle from Stern atSirius and shetook the diplomatic high road. I dont think theres ever any time that anyone is taking over for Howard, she said. Left unsaid is that no one needs to.

The other part of the story involves Sterns personal transformation where he is, where male-oriented audio media is. Stern supported Hillary Clinton in 2016 even as he had Trump on the show, the start of the shift, then three years latersaid he regretted the move. Support for Joe Biden and Kamala Harris followed, and by now Stern is practically a card-carrying member of the resistance.

Stern also has talked about the value of therapy, come to the middle-aged realization his younger self demeaned women and appeared on Anderson Cooper, all of which seem like signs of just basic human growth or existence.To me the opposite of woke is being asleep, Stern said in 2023. And if woke means I cant get behind Trump, which is what I think it means, or that I support people who want to be transgender or Im for the vaccine, dude call me woke as you fucking want.

None of this is especially remarkable on its own. But it plays that way in a world that now demands trolling outrageousness from someone who wants to command the manosphere that Stern created. And hes not likely to do that because, well, hesneverdone that, not really. While Stern always appealed to working-class men, his show was far from political beyond some vague anti-FCC First Amendment stances, and certainly not a Republican rally point (many working-class men back then after all were Democrats). I know that in Stern hateland there is all the talk about identity swaps and selling out, but its always seemed to me less that Stern has switched sides as much as the world has forced people to take one, and instead of pandering he just basically continued to be what he always has with maybe a bit more enlightenment, as one can attain in older age.

This is a sign of a kind of admirable integrity, even of the authenticity that made him so beloved in the first place. In a better world, this would havegainedhim listeners and maybe even brought some conservative skeptics along on issues like trans rights. In our world, though, it was just a very, very, very bad business decision, since the side all your fans are taking is the other one, which is how you end up with Trump going onGutfeld!,as he did in September, to decry you for going woke.

Which is also how we find ourselves in the peculiar year of 2025, in which if Stern wants to continue collecting that big paycheck he has to walk in to Sirius and tell Jennifer Witz and the rest of the bosses on Sixth Avenue that they should still write it even though many of the people they hired to bring innow appearnot to like him (seriously, read the Reddit boards; this isnt hate-listening so much as barely-caring) while telling himself that if he wants to continue doing the show as a mission to bring MAGA to moderateness he will almost certainly fail. Which makes you wonder why anyone would bother at all.

Stern as the king of all media understands the truth of both parts of this narrative better than anyone. What made you famous one day is what makes you irrelevant the next. Sure, you can keep touring as The Stones, doing the same thing to feed a nostalgic need and your own pocketbook, but can you live with yourself? Or you can be Bob Dylan, continually reinventing, but making the audience wonder what they just saw.

Or at some point you could tell yourself it might be better to just be the Beatles, remembered as a trailblazer without any new moments clouding the memory. Of course those who can command the spotlight do not easy relinquish it. In that regard Stern is not unlikeSouth Park, another once-famous piece of iconoclasm that, until recent negotiation headlines, many of us couldnt even say definitively was still on the air. And yet, its a ratings blockbuster once again in Trumps second term.

Theres a charitable way to view the Brinks Truck-backing for Parker and Stone or, if it happens, for Stern, in whichtrailblazers still bring the heat and broad legacy hits of a bygone era can remain durable.

But theres a more pessimistic and likely accurate perception that these are the last gasps of a world nearly completely dead, with little reason to prop up its survivors. Even hatewatching is unnecessary when theres so much else across the landscape to loathe.