Scandals That Led To Howard Stern's Massive Downfall From Fame

This article includes references to racism, ableism, and sexual exploitation.

SiriusXM's "The Howard Stern Show" is to podcasts what cave paintings are to the Museum of Modern Art. Before Joe Rogan was signing deals worth $250 million or Alex Cooper founded her Daddy Gang, Stern was on the airwaves interviewing A-listers, giving otherwise unknown oddballs their 15 minutes of fame, and putting pen to paper on nine-figure deals. 

However, alongside being a pioneer, the talk radio star has had his fair share of scandals. From making inappropriate comments on air to his not-so-nice working conditions, no one can doubt that Stern has earned his reputation as the premiere shock jock. Yet, in 2025, rumors emerged that his neon-lit set might be going dark. Was Stern about to hang-up his headphones?

"I'm not being fired, I'm talking to Sirius right now about extending in some way, and if that works out great," said Stern when speaking to Andy Cohen on, you guessed it, SiriusXM. "I love this company," he added. "When I signed on, I think it was 200,000 subscribers. XM was killing us ... And now today, there's this robust company, and I'm very proud of it." However, it's not as robust as it once was. In part, due to the boom in podcasts, such as Cooper's "Call Her Daddy," Stern's listenership has dropped from 20 million people daily in his pomp to a comparatively measly 125,000 in the 2020s (as per UnHerd). So, let's look at the on-air offenses that have led to such a fall-off.

In 1982, Howard Stern was broadcasting on the local Washington station DC-101. During his stint there, tragedy hit the state. In the mid-afternoon of January 13th, a passenger plane crashed into the 14th Street Bridge before landing in the Potomac River — 78 people lost their lives and only five survived. However, Stern didn't quite show the required reverence when he took to the mic less than 24 hours after the disaster.

"What's the price of a one-way ticket from [Washington National Airport] to the 14th Street Bridge?" Stern asked Air Florida, the airline whose plane crashed, via phone during his broadcast (as per InsideRadio). "Is that going to be a regular stop?" Yeesh. Although, Stern didn't really get through to the airline and he was only pretending to be on the call, the joke was still scandalous.

As a result of the controversy, as well as Stern denouncing his bosses on air at a later date, he was suspended and subsequently sacked. But, as will become clear, controversy washes off Stern like water off a duck's back. "I believed that my career would end at any minute," he told The New York Times Magazine in 2019. "The way that I felt that I could get mass audiences and ensure I'd get to work another day was to be the most outlandish, the most wild, the most funny and controversial."

"As you get older, you start to think about family and what their impressions might be," said Howard Stern when speaking to The New York Times Magazine in 2019. "My daughters and my wife are so important," he added. "I really did want to make changes as I got older in terms of what I put out there." We'd hope so, as the native New Yorker's jock-ish on-air behavior in the early '90s is not a part of his career that'll be looked back upon fondly.

"The closest I came to making love to a Black woman," he said on WXRK-FM in 1992, as per Business Insider, was I masturbated to a picture of Aunt Jemima on a pancake box. I did it right on her kerchief." This kind of locker-room talk is just plain wrong. Period. But it's even worse when it's broadcast to a large audience. As per the Los Angeles Times, in '92 Stern was the most listened-to breakfast show DJ in New York and LA. Not exactly the kind of comments you want to hear over a bowl of Cap'n Crunch, or anytime for that matter. 

The FFC fined Stern and the station a whopping $600,000, both for those offensive comments and the chance that they were broadcast to children. However, a fine wasn't enough to stop him from continuing to cross the line.

In 1995, the singer Selena, of "Amor Prohibido" fame, was fatally shot in the back outside a motel by the president of her own fan club. She's one of many '90s stars who met tragically strange fates. But Stern, as he was in Washington, was less-than-somber about the tragedy when broadcasting. Instead, he felt like making a joke or two and playing at being a music critic.

"If you're going to sing about what's going on in Mexico, what can you say?" asked Stern of Selena's music, as per Yahoo. "You can't grow crops, you got a cardboard house, your 11-year-old daughter is a prostitute. This is music to perform abortions to," he added. "Alvin and the Chipmunks have more soul ... Spanish people have the worst taste in music. They have no depth." Stern, not content with his controversial comments, then donned a mocking, OTT Spanish accent.

Many institutions, including the National Hispanic Media Coalition, condemned Stern. "He was absolutely gross," said head of the organization Esther Renteria, per the Los Angeles Times. "He was talking about having sex with her in her coffin." But it wasn't just condemnation. A warrant issued by a Texan judge stated that the DJ could be fined $500 if he ever set foot in her home state. Stern did later apologize, but it was widely rejected.

Howard Stern had a recurring cast of characters on his show called "The Wack Pack." However, he didn't treat this bunch too nicely. In 1994, Stern got actor and comedian Beetlejuice, who has a condition called microcephaly, a birth defect that causes a person to have a smaller head and/or brain (via the CDC), and Gary Loudermilk, who has Down syndrome, together for a quiz.

The quizzing included asking the contestants to spell red, asking how many days are in a week, and what color a fire engine is, as Stern's posse cackled in the background. The gimmick was as exploitative and condescending as it sounds.

Since the '90s, thankfully, attitudes toward disabled people have come a long way. But we can't say that Stern had a hand changing them for the better.

Howard Stern caused a stir with Anna Nicole Smith fans in 2002. "The way you dress and stuff, I don't think you're aware that you're a heavyset woman," Stern said to Smith on his radio show (via YouTube). The host then demanded that Smith get on the scales so his crew could guess her weight. It wasn't the only unkind meeting between the shock jock and the 1993 Playboy Playmate that year. In another '02 interview, as per YouTube, a caller mocked Smith for her weight before Stern joined in and criticized her eating habits.

When clips of the interview resurfaced in the social media age, many online weren't impressed with Stern's attitude. "This was pre-metoo where men bullying women into doing things they weren't comfortable with wasn't seen as creepy as f***," wrote one user on Reddit. "This wasn't comedy. It was intimidation and humiliation." Another Reddit user asked, "This is gross. Why was this ok?" Sadly, there was many more tragic details about Anna Nicole Smith's life.

Howard Stern's 2003 interview with Sofia Vergara is less an interview and more a broadcast leer. "You do have a big chest," remarked Stern to Vergara (via YouTube). "I'm gonna tell you something, don't touch it, I like it," he added, talking the "Modern Family" star out of getting breast reduction surgery. "Did you breastfeed your son?" Stern continued. "Oh, that must have been unbelievable."

You get the idea; Stern continually talked about Vergara's appearance and made explicit comments about her breasts, while also diving into her dating history. Understandably, Vergara didn't look too comfortable with the shock jock's line of questioning. After all, she wasn't there to be ogled at; she was there to promote her film "Chasing Papi."

"No respect here," said Vergara, after one of Stern's comments. Indeed, when the clip resurfaced online, many viewers agreed. "It sucks how much bulls*** women are expected to put up with," said one user in the YouTube comments. "What a creep. Absolutely no respect for her or what she's here to do," added another. "Every sentence is a sexual one, constantly hitting on her and making her uncomfortable." Somehow, that's not the one interview Howard Stern regrets.

$1.75 million. That was the eye-watering number that Howard Stern would have to pay for making inappropriate comments on air. According to The Guardian in 2004, the fee was the biggest fine imposed on a broadcaster for such a transgression. So, what did Stern say this time?

In April 2003, Stern interviewed professional poker player Rick Salomon, who perhaps most famously had a sex tape with Paris Hilton leaked the same year. In that interview, Stern made explicit X-rated sexual comments and a caller used the N-word when asking about Salomon's history with black women. "It was vulgar, it was offensive and insulting, not just to women and African Americans but to anyone with a sense of common decency," said Stern's boss at Clear Channel, John Hogan, as per Variety. "We will not air Howard Stern on Clear Channel stations until we are assured that his show will conform to acceptable standards of responsible broadcasting." Stern found a way back on the airwaves within a matter of months.

Later the same year, Stern signed a mega five-year contract with Sirius Satellite Radio worth $100 million per annum. So, it seemed like his scandalous chatter was a feature, not a bug, of his radio presenting.

From Janet Jackson and the 2004 Super Bowl's Nipplegate to wink-wink nudge-nudge jokes about Harvey Weinstein at award shows, many old pop culture moments have been cast in a new light as a result of the Me Too movement. Another of those pop culture moments is Howard Stern's 2005 interview with former Spice Girl Emma Bunton, previously known as Baby Spice. FYI, here's the story behind the Spice Girls' iconic nicknames.

A grainy, TV static-covered YouTube clip shows Stern making lewd comments to an exasperated Bunton, with the "Private Parts" author preoccupied with the "Say You'll Be There" singer's love life. "A chick like you, you've got a couple million in the bank," says Stern. "Good looking girl, no question about it," he added. "I'm wondering what it takes to get into your pants ... Is it a whole courtship or do you put out after the first [date]?" Stern's co-host then proceeds to play sex noises as Bunton covers her face with her hands. When she asks them to stop, they don't.

A kind view of the interaction is that it's of its time, but really, it's just inappropriate and creepy. The YouTube commentators agree. "Seriously this made me uncomfortable," said one user. Poor Emma." Another asked, " How does this guy have a show? He is a disconnected as humanly possible."

In 2009, Gabourey Sidibe starred in "Precious." The film premiered at the prestigious Cannes Film Festival, and Sidibe was later nominated for Best Actress at the 2010 Academy Award. So, trust Howard Stern to make it all about the actor's weight, rather than her craft.

"There's the most enormous, fat Black chick I've ever seen," Stern said of Sidibe on his radio show in 2010, as per Business Insider. "She is enormous. Everyone's pretending she's a part of show business and she's never going to be in another movie," he added. "She should have gotten the best actress award because she's never going to have another shot. What movie is she gonna be in?" Like his interview with Anna Nicole Smith, Stern's thoughts on women's bodies didn't go down well. Not least with Sidibe's mom, Alice Tan Ridley. "She's a big woman, so what's wrong with that? She's not like everyone else in the world," Ridley clapped back, as per the Los Angeles Times. "I don't see [Stern] giving jobs out to anybody, so why should we care what he says? He might not hire her, but someone else will."

Indeed, Stern's prediction was categorically wrong. Sidibe went on to star in television's "Empire" and directed the feature film "Be Happy" in 2026.

It's not just major celebrities that Howard Stern has shown insensitivity toward. In 2012, when Hurricane Sandy loomed over the homes of his SiriusXM employees, rather than offer his sympathies, Stern decided to engage them in Senate-hearing-esque scrutiny.

"Well why would you go back home if we're doing a show tomorrow?" the eponymous host of "The Howard Stern Show" asked his producer, Gary Dell'Abate. "I think the feeling for most people is that they have a wife and kids and a house that also needs to be protected," Dell'Abate responded. Stern then quizzed him about how he plans to protect his home, tells him he's abandoning ship, before adding that the producer had a guilty voice. "There's no sensitivity to somebody's home," Dell'Abate snapped. Another of Stern's staff, who fled the high-rise studio in fear of the elements, was mocked for being a coward.

The on-air disagreement angered fans of the show as much as Dell'Abate. "I got more hate mail, my fans turned on me," admitted Stern (via the Daily Mail), in a follow-up special about broadcasting during the hurricane that killed 48 New Yorkers. "'You don't care about your staff, you're not nice to the people that work with you,'" he added, quoting the correspondence he received. 

Howard Stern, who's Jimmy Kimmel's real-life BFF, is almost as controversial as Donald Trump. The so-called King of All Media added to that reputation when he decided to speak about the singer Sam Smith in 2017. The "Unholy" hitmaker has had their fair share of stick over the years, whether it's about their songs or dress sense. But Stern got his insults in years before the whole internet seemed to pile on the signer.

"Do you know what I love about that guy? He's an ugly motherf*****," said Stern on his radio show (via Attitude). "I feel like that ['Stay With Me'] will be his only hit song," he added. "I'd like to get him in here and congratulate him on beating the odds." We doubt that'll happen, though. "Ignore," was the BRIT Award winner's terse response to Stern's tirade, via an X post. Since then, Sam Smith has had one of the most dramatic celebrity transformations of the past decade.

Between 2022 and 2026, Leslie Kuhn was employed at first as Howard Stern's office manager, then as his executive assistant. Her final promotion saw her move to Southampton to work at the DJ's 20,000-square-foot, $20 million mansion. Despite her upward trajectory, according to Kuhn, her time working for Stern wasn't particularly enjoyable.

As per the Daily Mail, Kuhn alleged all manner of sub-par situations in her lawsuit, everything from a hostile working environment to irresponsible animal rescue (Stern and his wife, Beth Stern, have fostered over 900 cats) to suspect business and financial practices. However, Kuhn isn't seeking damages for this laundry list of issues. Rather, she just wants a dubious NDA to be declared null and void.

Not that an NDA has stopped fans noticing Stern is a pretty mean boss. Whether it's allegedly firing an employee after he started a GoFundMe for his wife's cancer treatment or being rude to staff who have given him over 30 years of service, the former "America's Got Talent" judge rules with a heavy-handed iron fist and an unforgiving attitude. Heck, there are even debates online as to which employee Stern has been the cruelest to.