Howard Stern’s Loyal ‘Superagent,’ Dies at 88…
Don Buchwald, a talent agent who further elevated the radio personality Howard Stern into the stratosphere of fame and wealth by negotiating a half-billion-dollar deal that sent him from terrestrial to satellite radio nearly two decades ago, died on July 22 at his home in North Egremont, Mass. He was 88.
His death was confirmed by his daughter Julia Buchwald.
“Everyone should have a Don Buchwald in their life,” Mr. Stern told The New York Times in a profile of Mr. Buchwald in 2018.
“I’d never want to be without him, and I don’t need anyone but him. It sounds like a love song, but it is.”
Mr. Stern was Mr. Buchwald’s most famous client in a career in which he had represented actors like Ed Asner, Tony Curtis and Kim Novak.
In 1984, Mr. Stern was a shock jock in a rocky relationship with his bosses at WNBC-AM in New York and in need of more career help than his lawyers could provide. He called three agents. Only Mr. Buchwald was interested, and they agreed to meet.
“He turned to me and said, ‘You know, your career could be as big as Johnny Carson’s,’” Mr. Stern recalled. “I thought this guy might be a little bit nuts.”
Through a spokeswoman for his show, Mr. Stern said, “Don means so much more to me than I can possibly express in a brief statement. I will save all my words for my show.”
But Mr. Buchwald was prescient about his new client’s future.
In late 1985, after WNBC fired Mr. Stern, Mr. Buchwald negotiated his move to WXRK-FM, known as K-Rock. Over the next 20 years, Mr. Stern’s popularity — and notoriety — swelled, and his show was syndicated to stations nationwide.
He christened himself the “King of All Media,” and in 1993 appeared on a Time magazine cover that depicted him and Rush Limbaugh breathing fire into a microphone. “Voice of America?” the headline asked.
But it was Mr. Buchwald’s negotiations in 2004 that led to a groundbreaking five-year, $500-million contract with Sirius Satellite Radio.
It introduced Mr. Stern to the freedom of satellite radio, where he could say anything he wanted, compared with traditional radio, where his sexual and scatological references led to fines by the Federal Communications Commission against stations that carried his show.
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The Sirius deal included 34.4 million shares of the company’s stock, which were worth $219 million to Mr. Stern and Mr. Buchwald when the show made its satellite debut in early 2006.
In the years afterward, Mr. Buchwald continued to negotiate new deals for Mr. Stern to stay with Sirius, which changed its name to SiriusXM Radio after its merger with XM Satellite Radio in 2008.
In 2011, Mr. Stern and Mr. Buchwald sued SiriusXM for potentially hundreds of millions of dollars in stock awards that they said they had been promised if certain subscription goals were met. A judge dismissed the lawsuit in 2012.
