Howard Stern lays off dozen staffers ahead of one-show-a-week shift

Howard Stern has laid off roughly a dozen staffers from his SiriusXM production team as he prepares to scale back to a single new show per week once he returns from his summer break after Labor Day, according to a Page Six report.

The cuts come less than a year after Mr. Stern signed a new three-year deal with SiriusXM in December, when he told listeners he had “figured out a way to have it all,” describing the arrangement as giving him greater “flexibility” while keeping him on the air.

Affected employees learned of the layoffs during a Zoom meeting Monday and were sent home immediately, with severance packages based on their tenure at the network. Mr. Stern is keeping a core team of veteran producers, but sources told Page Six he “just doesn’t need that much content anymore” under the reduced schedule.

The show, which currently airs three days a week, will fill the rest of its airtime with material from Mr. Stern’s decades-deep archive once the new format begins. Neither Mr. Stern nor SiriusXM has publicly commented on the reported changes.

Beth Stern, Mr. Stern’s wife, told fellow SiriusXM host Andy Cohen recently that “his new schedule is working out really well for him,” adding that it still gives her husband an outlet to stay connected with his audience.

The staffing reduction comes months after Mr. Stern and Ms. Stern were sued by former executive assistant Leslie Kuhn, who alleges she endured “a hostile work environment” while living at the couple’s Southampton mansion and managing household staff, payroll and Ms. Stern’s cat rescue operation. Ms. Kuhn’s lawsuit, filed in April in New York County Supreme Court, also seeks to invalidate nondisclosure agreements she says were improperly obtained. That case remains ongoing.