The Kings Of Old Media Are Dead, Long Live The Kings

Woke is broke, tired is fired

Howard Stern and Stephen Colbert are old men remembering the good times

When was the last time you saw a headline about Howard Stern? His antics were news, once upon a time. In fact, I think that the last time he got my attention was in 2006, when he moved his show onto SiriusXM. At the time, his contract terms — $100 million a year for five years — were newsworthy.

Not being a satellite radio listener, though, Stern went almost entirely off my radar. I did not watch America’s Got Talent during the four years he was on the show. So I lost track of him while he turned into a complete tool of the establishment, and stopped being funny.

Times have changed. SiriusXM has never outgrown terrestrial radio, no longer has gobs of money to throw at Howard Stern, and he no longer draws the listenership to justify that salary. “Sirius and Stern are never going to meet on the money he is going to want,” an insider tells the Sun. “It’s no longer worth the investment.” They are going to make a lowball offer that Stern will have to refuse: “There’s no way they can keep paying his salary.” Taken with a pinch of salt, it still describes the real shape of the situation.

The King of All Media is dead, long live the king. “After you saw what happened with Stephen Colbert, it's like they just can't afford to keep him going,” the insider says. The Late Show With Stephen Colbert reportedly lost CBS $40-50 million a year and employed over 200 people. The old media is dead, and now its kings are dead, long live the kings.

The ‘great vibe shift’ continues. A second source told the Sun that if SiriusXM lets Stern’s contract end, it was probably not about “ratings,” but “it's more likely everything to do with the political climate.”

The political climate reacted to the rumors with scorn. “Howard Stern is a name I haven’t heard. I used to do his show,” President Trump said in response to a reporter’s question about the story that Stern may leave SiriusXM. “We used to have fun, but I haven’t heard that name in a long time. What happened? He got terminated?”

Then Trump dropped the aw-shucks act. “You know when he went down? When he endorsed Hillary Clinton, he lost his audience. People said, ‘Give me a break.’ He went down when he endorsed Hillary Clinton.” On Fox News, Greg Gutfield called Stern a “wussified sycophant” and reminded viewers that Stern endorsed Kamala Harris in 2024. Agree or disagree with his politics, Stern did become a partisan agent.

Stern is 71 years old. When he moved onto satellite radio, George W. Bush was still president, but the adventure in Iraq had burned away his credibility. Democrats won power over Congress in the midterm, and the desire for national atonement that would animate the success of Barack Obama was already in the air.

Stern’s Clinton, Biden, and Harris endorsements followed from the logic that America needed saving from itself, that he was saving the world from the Republican Party and then Donald Trump. Colbert was also a creature of the Bush-Cheney regime, a comedic response that became too serious about saving the world through partisan hackery.

Late night television is probably doomed, as is linear television. Let them die. The streaming revolution and the great unplugging have altered the way we watch content, indeed the problem for a Stern or Colbert is that technological trends have greatly diminished their audience. Forced to compete on level platforms like YouTube, they easily lose out to a streamer like Asmongold.

The old media and all its kings are dying. Let them die so that we may remember them when they were better than this. Long live the media kings.