HBO Max Gets Howard Stern as His Radio Week Shrinks

Howard Stern will tape one live SiriusXM show each Monday starting September 14, then HBO Max will post an adapted cut every Thursday from September 17. The live show stays exclusive to SiriusXM through 2028. The streamer gets the pictures, plus extras, and a worldwide window the radio channel never had.

The Monday tape is now the whole new-radio week. HBO Max is a second sale of that same session, timed three days later so editors can shape a show built in a studio that still calls itself radio.

One Monday Tape Now Feeds Two Companies

SiriusXM and Stern announced the split on August 31. New live episodes air Mondays on satellite. An adapted streamable version lands on HBO Max the following Thursday, with periodic extras. The Howard Stern Production Company, Inc. is executive producing the Max run with SiriusXM.

Casey Bloys, chairman and CEO of HBO and HBO Max Content, called Stern a host with “an unmistakable, unique take on the world” and said the streamer was glad to bring the show onto the platform with SiriusXM. Stern, 72, said HBO talked him into pulling back a curtain that radio video had only cracked.

THE WEEKLY HAND-OFF

The live show is still the product SiriusXM is paying to keep exclusive through 2028. Max is buying a recut, not a second live day, and not the old catalog. Recent radio guests listed by SiriusXM include Ben Affleck and Matt Damon, Taylor Sheridan, Eddie Vedder, Nikki Glaser, and Sting with Shaggy, the kind of booking that plays as easily on a streamer as it does in a car.

The Three-Year Deal Bought Him Fewer Live Days

In December 2025, after months of cancellation chatter and an Andy Cohen prank on his own channel, Stern told listeners he had found a way to keep the mic and get time off. He said he was coming back for three years. Exact terms of that pact were not disclosed. His previous five-year contract was valued at $500 million.

I’m happy to announce that I figured out a way to have it all, more free time, and continuing to be on the radio. So, yes, we are coming back for three years.

Howard Stern, on The Howard Stern Show, December 16, 2025

Scott Greenstein, SiriusXM’s president and chief content officer, said the company is proud Stern chose to stay through 2028 for the exclusive live show and the library of classic hours. The new season is the first full test of what that “free time” looks like on the clock: one new live show a week, down from two.

He still has Robin Quivers across the glass, Fred Norris in the studio, and Gary Dell’Abate producing. He also has a streamer that will take the same Monday and sell it as prestige TV. The radio week got smaller. The distribution map got larger. Those two facts arrived in the same press release.

A Dozen Jobs Went After the Zoom Call

The headcount moved first. In July, as the show prepared to drop to one new episode a week after Labor Day, around a dozen staffers were let go. They got the news on a Zoom call, were sent home the same day, and were offered severance tied to how long they had been with the company. A core of veteran producers stayed. Staff were told the host no longer needed that much content.

THE JULY CUTS

• The meeting: Staff heard the one-day week on a Zoom call and were sent home immediately.
• The reason given: The show would need less new content once it returned from summer break.
• The leftover hours: Archive tape was slated to fill the rest of Howard 100.

That cut is the part of the Max announcement the release does not mention. A weekly video series needs cameras, editors, and a clean Monday. It does not need a second live radio staff. The remaining on-air engine is the old inner circle. The rest of the week is library and wrap-up.

The louder problem with this version of the show is not the streamer. It is that the factory that used to grind extra days, extra bits, and extra voices was already being taken apart so one tape could be clean enough to recut. A-list drop-bys travel well on Max. A deep bench of staff bits does not, once you are only live on Monday.

Howard 101 Leaves the Dial for Andy Cohen

The channel map moved with the calendar. Howard 101 came off SiriusXM on September 1 as part of a lineup overhaul. Stern’s remaining home is Howard 100. Andy Cohen’s Radio Andy moved from channel 102 to 101. The Stern library is moving onto 100 with him.

On September 14, Howard 100 also gets a new weekday crutch. Wrap Up Wednesday is an expanded version of the old Wrap Up Show, hosted by Dell’Abate and Jon Hein, the program that used to live on the sister channel that just vanished. SiriusXM is also adding Howard Stern Decades in its app, sorted as the 80s, 90s, 00s, and 10s, so the archive can be searched by era instead of by a second live day.

Cohen taking 101 is a clean trade on paper. Stern keeps the brand channel. SiriusXM keeps a live celebrity talker in the slot next door. Listeners who used 101 as overflow Stern lose that overflow the same week the live week shrinks to Monday. The company that reaches about 255 million monthly listeners across SiriusXM, Pandora, and the rest of its audio stack is not short on hours. It is short on new Stern hours.

Eleven Years of E! Cameras Came First

Putting cameras on this radio show is not a new idea. E! ran nightly half-hour highlights, and behind-the-scenes tape, from June 1994 to July 2005. The radio program was filmed with six robotic cameras in the WXRK-FM studio at 600 Madison Avenue, then cut for cable. The show was a consistent ratings performer for the channel. Stern parted ways with E! after 11 years as he prepared to leave terrestrial radio for Sirius, and the last original episode aired July 8, 2005.

THE VIDEO TRAIL BEFORE MAX

1. June 1994: E! begins weeknight highlights cut from the radio show’s studio cameras.
2. July 8, 2005: The final original E! episode airs after the Sirius move makes a basic-cable cut a poor fit.
3. January 2006: Howard TV launches on iN DEMAND as uncensored on-demand video of the Sirius show.
4. December 16, 2013: iN DEMAND and Stern’s team sunset the on-demand TV service after almost eight years.
5. August 31, 2026: SiriusXM and HBO Max announce a weekly adapted series cut from the Monday tape.

Howard 360, a later streaming plan tied to Whalerock Industries, never fully launched. Video rights sat with SiriusXM, which fed the app, the site, and a YouTube channel of clips. Stern also sat as a judge on America’s Got Talent, published Howard Stern Comes Again, and in 2022 did a Bruce Springsteen interview on HBO Max that the new release now cites as a trial run.

E! used six cameras to make a half-hour. Max is being sold as a seat in the studio. The method is the same: film the radio show, then ship a cleaner cut to people who will not pay for satellite. The difference is the live week underneath those cameras is now one day, and the second Stern channel is already gone.

What HBO Max Is Buying on Thursdays

SiriusXM’s own release is blunt about the hardware. As fans hear the live show, 40 cameras will capture the conversation for a version then adapted into a streamable episode, with periodic extras. That is a video production wrapped around a radio clock. It is also why Monday is no longer one day among several. It is the shoot.

For years, my SiriusXM show has offered only brief video peeks. HBO convinced me to pull back the curtain and let the world watch; the amazing celebrities and musicians who drop by, our staff antics, and my conversations with Robin. Bringing my latest SiriusXM shows to HBO Max’s millions of viewers, every week, is a career highlight, and I’m thrilled to be joining the ranks of such prestigious television.

Howard Stern, statement with the August 31, 2026 announcement

He named the goods Max is actually buying: celebrity drop-bys, staff antics, and the long conversation with Quivers. He did not name a second live radio day. Greenstein’s line about a “compelling new video version” sits next to the reminder that the live show and the classic library stay at SiriusXM. The streamer gets the new tape. The archive stays behind the satellite wall, now sorted on 100 and in the app.

WHAT WE KNOW

• The window: First Max episode posts Thursday, September 17, at 12:01 a.m. PT (3:01 a.m. ET), then every Thursday after.
• The source tape: Each episode is adapted from that week’s Monday SiriusXM show, with extras from time to time.
• The radio lock: Live Stern remains exclusive to SiriusXM through 2028.

WHAT IS UNCONFIRMED

• Runtime: The companies have not published a set length for the Max cut.
• The extras: “Periodic extras” are promised, without a list of what they are.
• The old shows: There is no announcement putting the pre-2026 Sirius library on HBO Max.

The first Max episode posts at 12:01 a.m. PT on September 17, three days after the first Monday tape of the new season.