It wasn’t supposed to be like this.
A big, explosive controversy that’s impossible to ignore! A jaw-dropping confession that outraged his corporate bosses! Or maybe he’d finally suffer the consequences of speaking “truth to power” — and pay the ultimate price for refusing to back down!
That’s how “The Howard Stern Show” was supposed to end.
This November marks the 100th anniversary of TS Eliot’s haunting poem, “The Hollow Men.” It’s a telling coincidence, for it foretold not just the fate of the world, but of a certain shock-jock: “This is the way the [Howard Stern Show] ends; Now with a bang but a whimper.”
But calling it a whimper would be an overstatement. It was more of a “tree falling in a forest when no one’s around” situation, because Howard Stern’s audience abandoned him years ago: “Stern’s program has fluctuated from 20 million daily to just 125,000 of late.”
That’s an astonishing fall from grace. There are, quite literally, thousands of nameless, faceless YouTubers, TikTokers, X posters, and “influencers” with far larger audiences than the one-time “King of All Media.” During his heyday, 20 million Americans famously listened to Howard Stern to “see what he says next”.
Hellbound and Down 