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XM and Sirius satellite radio services hit their subscriber forecasts in 2005, Brandweek reports. XM Satellite Radio added 2.7 million subscribers in 2005 to end the year with more than 6 million. Sirius Satellite Radio added 2.1 million subscribers to end the year with 3.3 million subscribers.
While XM signed up more subscribers over the year, Howard Stern’s move to Sirius showed signs of tipping the balance.
XM signed up 900,000 new subscribers during the fourth quarter.
RadioInk reports that Sirius added 1,142,640 net new subscribers for an increase of 138 percent over the year-ago quarter. Sirius says it was their best ever quarterly gain.
Adding those subscribers earns Stern a big payday, Billboard Radio Monitor reports. Sirius revealed Thursday in an SEC filing that its subscriber total at the end of 2005 exceeded the subscriber target it agreed upon when it contracted with Stern. Exceeding that target triggered the issuance of 34,375,000 shares to Stern and his agent. Sirius said those shares were then valued at about $110 million.
The shares are now worth $219 million, The New York Times reports.
“Howard Stern is a business,” Craig Moffett, an analyst at Sanford C. Bernstein, said. “Sirius is paying, in essence, a license fee for what is a large and successful business.”
Though off-air online and experiential advertising grew modestly as a part of the overall radio revenue pie, and election-related political ads increased in Q3, total radio ad revenues were down 9% to $4.97 billion for Q3 and down 10% for…
Glamour magazine is running its photo of Britney Spears not only on the cover of the U.S. edition, but on the covers in seven other countries, as well.
Britney will grace Russia, Sweden and Greece’s editions of Glamour, among others.…
Titan Worldwide has signed a five-year deal with the Delaware River Port Authority to manage out-of-home advertising for the Port Authority Transit corp.
The contract covers advertising on PATCO’s rail service and stations between Southern New Jersey and Philadelphia, writes Mediaweek.…
Publicis has acquired full-service agency W&K Communications, continuing its Asia expansion that began several years ago.
W&K will be pulled under the umbrella of Publicis’s Burnett agency network, and will be renamed Leo Burnett Beijing Advertising, writes Adweek.
Other recent Publicis…
With only four weeks separating Thanksgiving and Christmas this year, Cyber Monday One (December 1) and Cyber Monday Two (December 
may command a greater share of online sales than they have in years past - thus increasing the importance…
Top American non-luxury auto brands received higher ratings and less negative comments from online consumers than competing Japanese brands, according to an analysis of consumer opinions collected from automotive review websites by Biz360, MarketingCharts reports.
The research, which aggregated a year’s…
