SiriusXM Radio Wants Howard Stern As Long As He Wants to Work

SiriuxXM CEO Jim Meyer said Tuesday he “has been really clear that I want Howard Stern to be on SiriusXM for as long as Howard wants to work” as the satellite radio giants star attraction approaches the end of a five-year contract.

Deadline reports Stern has commented that he’s stressed and wants to retire at year-end when his term is even as The Howard Stern Show continues to generate headlines. Returning to the air from his home studio Monday he endorsed Joe Biden and invited President Trump to try injecting Clorox and his supporters to “all take disinfectant and all drop dead.”

Speaking on a conference call following quarterly earnings, Meyer said he and the host “have a tremendous relationship and it’s never been better, and the quality of the show he is bringing … every day couldn’t be better.” He planned to address it, “But I think these discussions are better held in person.” That’s impossible to do currently but he said he hopes it might happen in the third quarter.

SiriusXM posted a profit of $293 million for the first quarter ended in March, up 62%. The parent of Pandora said it had close to 35 million subscribers at the end of March.

Ad revenue at Pandora reached a first-quarter high of $241 million, growing 4%. Monthly Active Users (MAUs) at Pandora were 60.9 million in the first quarter. Total ad-supported listener hours were 3.13 billion in the period.

While Meyer notes that he’s “confident that our business will continue to generate substantial positive free cash flow,” the company's current outlook comes with more than a few asterisks. Over the next six months, SiriusXM projects that its subscriber revenue will suffer from a decline in car sales, “reduced drive time,” and a dearth of staffing at its vendors’ call centers.

The company also foresees a decline in advertising revenues at SiriusXM and Pandora as advertising spending cools, while it plans to “slow the development of new products and services, including streaming and connected vehicle services.”

However, SiriusXM expects that the pandemic won’t have much of an impact on programming and content expenses. “We expect to continue to honor our agreements to acquire, create, promote and produce content, including our obligations in some cases to sports leagues that have cancelled significant portions of their seasons,” the company reported.

“We do not know what the shape of a recovery from this current crisis will look like,” Meyer continued. “Once we have a better view of how and when the economy will restart, we plan to resume providing guidance.”