TV

'AGT' Judges' Testy Fight Over Jay Leno

By Antoinette Bueno

ET sat down with the always candid Howard Stern and Howie Mandel to talk about the next season of America's Got Talent, where the judges joked about everything from their "bromance," if Howard and Sharon Osbourne will return next season, and surprisingly, their disagreement over fellow NBC man Jay Leno.

Howard recently made headlines for his harsh comments about the budget cuts at Jay Leno's The Tonight Show, and he revealed on his radio show that he got a "threatening kinda comment" from an NBC executive but refused to back down. "I said, 'Do not ask me not to talk about Jay Leno. I will f***ing talk about Jay for four hours if you tell me not to," he said on his Sirius XM program.

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"I think his criticism is over the top, I'll be honest," Howie, a friend of Leno's, tells ET.

"It's real and it's personal," counters Howard. "It's more than good radio, it's real. ... He's been horrible to everyone in show business."

After Howie praises Leno as "a good guy" and "a good worker," Howard jokes, "and now you know why Howie will be the only judge left on this show," before calling NBC "the most dysfunctional family ever."

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But though the two clearly have their disagreements, they also plainly stated their mutual respect for one another, even calling their friendship a "bromance."

"All kidding aside, I have the utmost respect for this man. We respectfully disagree on certain things but that's what we should do ... we have different tastes and different views ... and people sometimes detect maybe an animosity -- there's no animosity," Howie says. "We're Sterndel," he jokes, combining their two last names together.

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Check out the video to hear their cheeky response to whether Sharon Osbourne will be back next season, given her war of words with NBC over allegedly discriminating against her son Jack Osbourne after he announced he was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis.