Fred Norris Was Quietly Looking for Work While Howard Stayed Silent — The Story Behind the Stern Show’s Most Tense Winter
By October 2025, everyone on The Howard Stern Show staff was living in a kind of professional limbo. Howard’s contract with SiriusXM was expiring at the end of the year. Negotiations were happening behind closed doors. And the man at the center of it all was saying almost nothing — leaving the people who had built their lives around his show to quietly wonder if they still had jobs.
Then came the overheard conversation that broke through the silence.
According to a source who spoke to The Sun, Fred Norris — Howard’s sidekick since 1979, the quiet genius behind decades of parody songs and sound effects, one of the most loyal figures in the entire Stern universe — was spotted walking through the halls at SiriusXM talking to a colleague. The source reported his words almost verbatim:
“Let me know, because I don’t know what’s going to happen come January — I might be looking for a job.” — Fred Norris, October 2025
Fred Norris. The man who has been with Howard since before some of his current fans were born. Quietly, discreetly, in a hallway — admitting out loud that he didn’t know what was coming next.
The same source indicated that Stern Show producer Gary Dell’Abate — better known as Baba Booey, another cornerstone of the show’s identity — was also not optimistic about a renewal. Staff members were reportedly bracing for the show’s current season to be its last.
Other sources painted an even harder picture of the internal atmosphere. One told reporters that Howard had been difficult to work with during the uncertainty, that staff were “walking on pins and needles” around him, and that his 95 employees — people who had dedicated their careers to the show — felt their security was hanging by a thread while Howard negotiated a deal that could make him hundreds of millions of dollars either way.
“His staff has been nothing but loyal to Howard, and he’s treated them abominably,” one source said. It’s a brutal quote — and one that, if true, lands hard when you think about what people like Fred and Gary have given to that show over the decades.
Of course, the story has a resolution. Howard eventually signed his new three-year deal in December 2025. Fred Norris stayed. Robin stayed. The show came back in January 2026 with a reduced schedule but the same core team intact.
But the months between the rumors and the announcement? Those months were real. The fear in those hallways was real. And Fred Norris standing in a corridor at SiriusXM quietly wondering if he needed to update his resume — after 46 years beside Howard Stern — is a moment that says something worth sitting with about how loyalty works in this business, and who it tends to protect.
