Howard Stern’s cut to one episode a week on Sirius XM led to roughly 12 staffers losing their jobs at The Howard Stern Show, and some of those exits are now tied up in severance talks. The dispute is not about the layoffs alone. It is about the package, the NDA, and who will sign off.
July 30 Severance Pushback
On July 30, some former employees declined the severance package and were still negotiating their exit packages. The offer was one week’s pay for every year they worked for him, while a source said each decade of service brought just two months of severance. That gap explains why the deal landed as a floor, not a finish line.
On July 20, a source said the NDA would cost employees even that severance if they spoke about the situation. Stern’s team had already moved the dismissals to a Zoom call, which made the process fast and impersonal, but the real leverage sat in the paperwork that followed. For employees, the decision was no longer just whether to leave; it was whether to take the money and stay quiet.
Benjy Bronk and Old Navy
Benjy Bronk, Jon Blitt, Memet Walker and Mike Trainor were among the staffers who lost their jobs. Jon Blitt later took to Instagram claiming he now works at Old Navy, a detail that says more than a formal statement ever could: once the severance terms land badly, former on-air or behind-the-scenes figures start signaling their next move in public, even if the negotiation is still unresolved.
The fact that some former employees refused to sign the NDA makes this more than a routine staff reduction. When a severance package is tied to silence, the dispute shifts from payroll to control of the story, and that is where these exits have stalled. The immediate pressure now is on which former employees will settle and which will keep pushing for better terms before the breakdown hardens into a longer fight.
