Andy Cohen plans to interview Howard Stern this week, as contract negotiations at SiriusXM continue. 

The interview with Stern and Cohen, who is also part of the SiriusXM family, comes after months of speculation about Stern’s contract at the satellite radio empire and the impact on the company should he leave. Speaking at an event for advertisers in New York Monday, SiriusXM leaders say they are interested in keeping Stern, while also pointing to its full bench of talent in podcasting and radio, including Cohen, Alex Cooper and more. 

“He has a lot of fans on the platform. And I’m encouraged. I think we’re gonna get to the right place,” SiriusXM CEO Jennifer Witz told THR of Stern. “And it’s really about what does Howard want? What do we want? What do our listeners want? And I think something will come together.”

For his part, Cohen, who has his own radio empire at SiriusXM and recently pranked listeners of Stern’s show by taking over his show, calls Stern an “inspiration” for his own career and said he plans to ask a range of hard-hitting questions. The interview is set to take place Tuesday and air Friday on Radio Andy. 

“I want to talk to him about why he’s such a recluse. He’s approaching Howard Hughes’ levels, and I want to try to get him out of the house,” Cohen said. “I want to talk to him about his contract. I want to talk to him about politics.”

“He’s someone who always goes there, and so am I,” he added. 

While Witz has called Stern a “core” part of SiriusXM, the company has also been building out its next generation of talent by positioning itself as a talent-friendly destination and one that will help creators build out their brands and introduce a new slate of stars. 

“We take rising voices, try to make them stars, and then we give stars the platform to build their own empire,” Scott Greenstein, president and chief content officer at SiriusXM, said on stage at the event.

At the upfront event, SiriusXM played videos from talent including Cooper and Conan O’Brien, who both have large podcast networks there; as well as Stephen A. Smith, who recently signed on for two radio shows; Trevor Noah; the SmartLess podcast hosts; and Cooper, one of the biggest podcasters for her show, Call Her Daddy, as well as her Unwell podcast network. Cooper has been seen as a key asset for the company because of her large, young listenership base, which is appealing to advertisers and helps the company’s demographics. 

“We own Gen-Z women,” Cooper said of her podcasting network on stage Monday. “What we’re looking for is to fill each category.” She then went on to list her network’s podcasts in beauty, talk and therapy with a possible expansion into sports. 

As it was with Stern, Cohen and several members of SiriusXM’s talent slate say they’re drawn to the company because of the creative freedom they’re given on the platform. 

“They’re incredibly focused on free expression and on creativity and letting me do whatever I want to do. They don’t give me notes saying ‘You can’t do that.’ It’s really just, ‘How do we make it happen?’ That’s a pretty amazing thing to have a blank slate, especially in 2025, the media landscape as it is,” said Cohen, who recently resigned with SiriusXM after ten years at the company and has a slate of shows on his radio channel, Radio Andy, as well as his own daily show.

Podcasting in particular has proven to be a big driver for the company in terms of ad revenue, with Witz saying the company leads industry monetization in terms of revenue per download. SiriusXM currently has deals with half of the top 20 podcasts, according to Edison Research, but Witz said there could still be room for more, particularly when it comes to fitting certain niches that are attractive to advertisers. 

“We don’t really think about, let’s get half of the top 20,” Witz said. “It’s more about which ones are growing and just kind of building audiences and on the ascent, or fit a certain demographic or kind of content.” 

“I mean, everyone’s calling, everyone wants to look and see what’s out there. And I do think we have a lot of flexibility because of how we’ve been able to monetize, and the idea that, I think we are very creator-friendly,” she added. “But we’re not going to do a deal to do a deal.”

While podcasting has been on the rise, Witz said the “car is still core” to SiriusXM in terms of its satellite business. However, the subscriber base has been slowly churning down over the past several years to land just under 33 million, and there are concerns that if Stern were to depart, he would take away a swath of listeners.

The company has brought subscriber churn down to around 1.5 percent to 1.6 percent, and Witz said she sees more opportunities to bring that even lower by exposing customers engaging in free trials to more of SiriusXM’s content and learning more about their listening habits. Greenstein has also previously floated the idea of converting listeners of popular podcasters to subscribers, in some form. 

“Alex Cooper’s music channel on Sirius is doing really well, and that’s obviously geared to a younger audience. So we’re going to look at where that calibration is and start to see where something might be younger, but yet ripe for subscription. And while we’re waiting that out, we’re going to continue to monetize heavily younger content in the podcast market,” Greenfield said in July. 

The current goal is to stabilize the subscriber base, and then Witz also sees the potential for more growth in satellite. 

“I still think we have more opportunity to bring listeners to Sirius XM from AMFM and in the car,” Witz said. 

She added, “35 to 50 [years old] is still a big opportunity for us, because we’d started the service 20 years ago. And so we have a lot of subscribers, affluent subscribers, 45 and up, but at 35 to 45 or 50, we still have a lot more opportunity.”