Howard Stern Tells Jimmy Kimmel It’s Likely His Last Talk Show Appearance

• Howard Stern, 72, told Jimmy Kimmel on Tuesday’s Jimmy Kimmel Live, taped in Brooklyn, that he’s “pretty sure” it was his last appearance on any talk show.
• He also told ABC, on its own air, that “there is no man more loyal to this company” than Kimmel.
• On Stern’s own SiriusXM show, he accused Kimmel of faking his friendship with Jimmy Fallon. Kimmel pushed back.

Howard Stern, 72, says his latest late-night visit is probably his last. “I’m pretty sure this is my last TV appearance on any talk show,” he said on Jimmy Kimmel Live on Tuesday, Sept. 29, during the show’s week of tapings in Brooklyn.

He was only there, he added, “because we’re such close friends.” It’s the same friendship Stern poked at on his own show, where he told Jimmy Kimmel, 58, that he doesn’t believe Kimmel really likes Jimmy Fallon, 52.

What did Howard Stern say on ‘Jimmy Kimmel Live’?

He spent part of the 18-minute segment on something he said he’d heard. “I have heard many rumors about this show. I don’t know if they’re true or false,” Stern said. “But I want to say something to the ABC if they are watching right now.”

There is no man more loyal to this company than this guy.

Howard Stern, on Jimmy Kimmel Live

His evidence: Kimmel goes to ABC’s upfronts, the yearly pitch to advertisers, every year. “They don’t pay you to do it,” Stern said he told him. Kimmel’s answer, as Stern told it: “I go because it’s ABC and they need me to do it.”

Stern didn’t say which rumors he meant, and Kimmel didn’t address them. ABC pulled Jimmy Kimmel Live off the air for nearly a week in September 2025 before bringing it back.

The rest was the Stern-Kimmel routine. Stern said his wife, Beth Stern, insists “nothing’s wrong with Jimmy,” while he argues Kimmel is “more screwed up” than he is and “can’t go a night without getting high.” Kimmel’s replies: “No, not every night,” and then, “That’s vacation me you’re thinking of.”

The couples have traveled together, and Stern said that on their trip to Italy, where he admitted he never understood why people enjoy traveling, he got through it by copying Kimmel and his wife, Molly McNearney: “I watched you and I watched Molly and I imitated joy.”

Why did Howard Stern question Kimmel’s friendship with Jimmy Fallon?

It started on The Howard Stern Show, with Kimmel as the guest. Stern said Kimmel had invited him to a get-together over the summer where Fallon was also a guest, and that he left unconvinced.

“I wish you would just come clean,” Stern said, according to The Daily Beast’s account of the episode. “You don’t enjoy being around Jimmy Fallon.”

Kimmel disagreed on both counts. “I cannot imagine anyone not having fun hanging around with Jimmy Fallon,” he said, adding that he was having dinner with Fallon that same week. He asked whether Stern really thought he’d spend his free time “maintaining a pretend friendship for no reason whatsoever.”

Stern held his ground: “I think you desperately need to prove that, ‘Oh, we can all get along.'”

Are Jimmy Kimmel and Jimmy Fallon friends?

On the record, yes, and they’ve made a running joke of being mixed up. In a 2019 Kimmel sketch, the two wore sweaters with their last names on them to “clear up who is who.”

They have been competitors since Fallon took over The Tonight Show in February 2014, and they sang together with Stephen Colbert for Stern’s holiday show in 2017.

When ABC suspended Kimmel in 2025, Fallon said on his show, “I do know Jimmy Kimmel, and he’s a decent, funny, and loving guy, and I hope he comes back.”

How can you watch ‘The Howard Stern Show’ now?

Stern signed a new SiriusXM deal that runs through 2028 and cut back to one new live show a week, on Mondays, since Sept. 14. “I was gonna leave radio,” he told Kimmel, but “I tried to find a compromise.”

The compromise is HBO Max. Since Sept. 17, the streamer has posted an edited version of each week’s show on Thursdays, shot with 40 cameras in the studio. It requires an HBO Max subscription; the live show stays on SiriusXM.

He also opened his Kimmel visit by urging viewers not to vote for Kimmel’s sidekick, Guillermo Rodriguez, who is competing on Dancing With the Stars this season. Here’s how voting on the show works, if you’d rather ignore him.

More from Movies & TV: who has been eliminated on Dancing With the Stars so far.

— Bruno Monteiro

Sources: Howard Stern on Jimmy Kimmel Live (ABC), Sept. 29, 2026; The Howard Stern Show (SiriusXM), as reported by The Daily Beast (Eboni Boykin-Patterson), Sept. 29, 2026; SiriusXM press release, Aug. 31, 2026 (new season, HBO Max and contract); Jimmy Fallon on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon (NBC), September 2025. Photos and video: Jimmy Kimmel Live (ABC), 2019 and 2026; The Howard Stern Show (SiriusXM), 2009, 2017 and 2022; HBO Max.