The final three live morning shows will take place on today, Tuesday, and Wednesday, and even Stern warned this past Wednesday that this could be all that Sirius XM subscribers get before the show goes "in to the ether."
Sirius XM announced in October that, if and when there would be news on Stern's renewal, it would be announced on Stern's show. With that window closing in a few days, the smart money has to be on an announcement coming as early as this morning or as late as during Wednesday's annual Stern Christmas show.
Stern loves to cut it close. He didn't announce he was renewing his original deal five years ago until the second week of December.
The Motlery Fool reports there are plenty of good reasons for him to hang it up after a decade on Sirius XM, and a couple of decades on terrestrial radio before that. He has certainly earned his retirement, and he can always scale back the way that Jon Stewart is doing by leaving his show, but still staying in the spotlight through a deal with HBO to crank out short-form content from time to time.
Stern has been scaling back his commitments. His show only runs three days a week, with a lot of vacation breaks along the way. That wasn't the case during his initial five-year contract, and certainly not what was happening during his days on terrestrial radio.
Stern, who will turn 62 in January, remains one of the top rainmakers in American radio, and SiriusXM—which is flush, thanks to its large, growing subscriber base—would like to keep him. But, according to Bloomberg, these are tumultuous times for the industry, and any number of companies jockeying for market share in the emerging world of Internet radio could benefit immensely from luring Stern and his rabid fan base away from SiriusXM.
Wherever Stern lands, his talents won't come cheap. His current contract reportedly costs SiriusXM about $80 million a year.
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