A Satellite Giant's Surprisingly Small Audience

So now that Sirius and XM have merged, nothing can stop them from becoming a world-dominating satellite hegemon, right?

Well, maybe one thing: They still don't seem to have a hell of a lot of listenership. At least Sirius doesn't. As Silicon Alley Insider pointed out yesterday, Sirius reported greatly slowed growth in its subscriber acquisitions in the second quarter. Nearly 90 percent of those subscribers it did acquire got their subscriptions as part of a new car purchase. In other words, they're Sirius customers in the same sense that they're anti-lock brakes customers.

And there's reason to think those subscribers aren't using their Sirius tuners as much as you might think -- not to listen to some of its putatively more high-profile programming, at any rate. The company doesn't release public ratings figures for its channels or shows, and I was somewhat shocked to learn, from a Sirius insider, that it didn't even have internal audience data until quite recently -- just a few months ago.

Among other things, the new data showed that Sirius Stars -- the talk channel featuring Barbara Walters, Deepak Chopra, Candace Bushnell and other well-known hosts -- attracted fewer than 30,000 listeners in a week. Assuming that number wasn't an absolute fluke, it seems likely Sirius will see fit to reevaluate its talent roster in the near future with an eye toward who is -- and isn't -- paying the bills.