Anyone who has listened to Howard Stern in the past week would have heard his discussion of being offered an Opie-and-Anthony-like deal to simulcast his Sirius program over terrestrial radio.

And anyone who listened would have heard him reject that out of hand.

Here is how MarksFriggin.com reported it last week:

Howard said he was offered the chance to go back to terrestrial radio just like Opie and Anthony are doing but he won't do it because he doesn't want to go back there. He said he could go back and beat all of those guy's asses but it would be really tough to go back to regular radio after being on satellite.

That was last week.

And then, this week, stories like this appeared: Stern May Come Back to Regular Radio

And that fueled a ton of speculation in other media outlets, and so on and so on.

So, on his program this morning, Stern spent the first hour doing nothing but saying what he said last week: He's had offers to do a show for terrestrial radio, and he's turned them down and won't go back.

(On the program, Stern had his producer try to call AP, Reuters and other news services to issue a statement, but none of them would take the call because Stern wanted to do it on-air. The only taker for an interview with Stern was CBS News, which is owned by the company now suing him.)

This appears to be a case of journalists and producers reporting the story they wanted, rather than the story that existed.

MORE: Larry McShane from AP called in, and got the story.