Howard Stern Re-Signs With Sirius Satellite Radio For 5 Years, Goof On Staff Member Leads Millions To Think He Retired

Twitter, Facebook, Blogs and cell phones on the East coast simultaneously blew up at around 8:10 AM Eastern time today as Howard Stern announced he was going "off into the sunset" and retiring from Sirius Satellite Radio to spend more time with his wife and concentrate on playing chess. The problem is that that announcement was a prank being played on a staff member, and listeners tuning in for their 8AM commute had no idea..

The morning played out like this:

At around 6AM Eastern Time this morning, Howard Stern announced he has inked a deal to continue his show for another 5 years with Sirius Satellite Radio.

The problem for millions of loyal listeners is that if they were not listening to the show at the time of the 6AM re-signing announcement, they unknowingly fell victim to the 8AM prank.

Sal "The Stockbroker" Governale was late arriving to the studio this morning due to oversleeping as a result of a late night out drinking and was not aware of the news of the new contract so a few hours following the original 6AM announcement (sometime around 8:10 AM) Howard called a meeting in the studio with key staff.

The meeting, which was taking place live on air, included Governale when Stern stated "I have an announcement to make. I have decided to go off into the sunset. My wife wants me to spend more time at home, and I would like to devote more time to playing chess." This news sent Governale into a crying tirade as he openly wailed about having no money saved, and he was now worried about his children's future. Howard played into Sal's misery for a few moments and continued to let him cry on air as the joke continued. After a few more minutes of playing into Sal's agony, Howard asked him "Sal, were you late this morning?" After Sal responded with a "yes", Howard said "What happens when you're late? You get goofed on... You missed the announcement this morning. The whole world knows I resigned for 5 more years... that's what you get for being late....."

As Sal's crying like a little bitch reaction will surely go down as an iconic stern moment, due to the timing of the 8AM prank, Millions of listeners were tuning in for the first time and fell victim to the prank announcement as much as Sal did. Social networks were nearly overloaded as news of Howard's "retirement" began to spread at 8AM by the millions of despondent fans who didn't know what was really happening.

Well played Howard, well played!