The day after Jimmy Kimmel returned to his late-night show on ABC following a suspension over his remarks about Charlie Kirk and pressure from the Federal Communications Commission, Kimmel’s friend Howard Stern took to the airwaves to recall his own battle with the FCC.
During his SiriusXM show on Wednesday, Sept. 24, Stern took a call from veteran journalist Jeff Jarvis, who asked him to compare his own infamous battle with the FCC to Kimmel’s current situation.
Why was Howard Stern targeted by the FCC?
Stern was targeted by the FCC between 1990 and 2004 with fines totaling $2.5 million to stations that carried his show for airing allegedly indecent material. The fines from the FCC and the subsequent stress caused by the agency’s scrutiny of his show eventually prompted Stern to leave terrestrial radio in late 2005 for Sirius Satellite Radio, where he would not have to follow the FCC’s broadcast rules for obscene content.
“ It was very traumatizing,” Stern said. “I remember feeling very victimized because deep down in my heart, all I wanted to do was make people laugh. That’s all I wanted to do ever since I was a little kid.
“And when I saw Jimmy going through this, I certainly felt so bad for him. That’s why I picked up the phone immediately to call him, because I remember feeling very alone,” Stern recalled. “Even though I was married and had kids and everything else, and certainly [co-host] Robin [Quivers] was supportive and [longtime staffer] Fred [Norris] and [producer] Gary [Dell’Abate] and everyone who worked on the show.
How did Howard Stern feel at the time?
“But at the end of the day, I felt so alone. That was the overwhelming feeling. I was like, I feel like this is all ludicrous. It’s happened throughout history and I just want them to stop. There’s so many other problems in the world, but I’m the big problem. And then there was another feeling of just feeling awful for the people who employed me because all I ever wanted to do is make money for them and make them feel good about hiring me and see me as an asset,” he added.
Stern went on to recall how he would go into the office of executive Mel Karmazin, the CEO of Infinity Broadcasting and later CBS Radio, and apologize to him.
“ I just felt the weight of the world on my shoulders. And I said, ‘How am I gonna get out of this thing?’ Because you can’t win against the government when the government wants you. They have endless resources, our taxpayer money to attack you, to hire lawyers, to put pressure on the institutions that run broadcast facilities,” he added.
How Stern’s situation was different from Jimmy Kimmel’s?
Stern noted that there were differences between his and Kimmel’s situations.
“The hypocrisy of it seemed to me that anybody could turn off the radio if they didn’t like me. And that whole argument that kids could be listening to me. They can’t be listening if their parents didn’t want. Maybe they could have, who knows? But Jimmy’s situation was way worse, at least with my situation, you could make the argument with the kids or something if you really wanted to go down that lane. But with Jimmy’s, it was just out and out. ‘Hey, you’re making fun of the president. We don’t like it.’”
This story was originally reported by Parade on Sep 24, 2025, where it first appeared in the News section. Add Parade as a Preferred Source by clicking here.
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