Some former staffers at The Howard Stern Show have declined the severance package that followed Howard Stern’s latest round of layoffs, turning a cutback into a dispute over how people can leave and what they can say afterward. Stern, 72, had reduced his Sirius XM show to one episode a week before roughly 12 employees were let go in a Zoom call.
The package at issue was simple on paper: one week's pay for every year worked. But that did not satisfy everyone, and some people are still negotiating their exit packages. One source described the offer as harsh for employees who had spent years on the show, saying some would have expected more from a host whose staff helped build the program over decades.
The fight matters now because it is not just about who lost a job. It is about the terms attached to leaving. A source said earlier that each decade of service to The Howard Stern Show got just two months of severance, and that the NDA could cost employees their money if they spoke about the situation. That put pressure on former staff to choose between taking the deal and staying silent, or walking away from it.
That friction helps explain why the layoffs have not settled into a clean postscript. Benjy Bronk, Jon Blitt, Memet Walker and Mike Trainor all lost their jobs, and Blitt has since taken to Instagram claiming he now works at Old Navy. But the sharper story is that some former employees refused the severance terms altogether, suggesting the final bill for the downsizing is still being argued over even after the Zoom call ended.
For now, the most important unanswered piece is not how many were cut. It is whether the people who walked away from the offer can force better terms, or whether The Howard Stern Show will close the book with the package Stern initially put on the table.
