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Sirius Had Howard, XM Now Has Oprah: Battle of Media Titans in Space
For 15 months, Howard Stern became the biggest figurehead encouraging radio listeners to give up "free" radio and sign up for satellite radio. Obviously, he promoted his future (and now) home: Sirius Radio.
While the media went ga-ga staying on the Howard Watch beat, XM just stuck to their knitting and quietly kept their growth pace of new subscibers. Plus they created some excellent TV ads featuring key stars (Ellen, Bowie, Snoop, etc.) and even had an episode on "The Apprentice" during Novemeber sweeps.
With a month of Howard on Sirius, XM Radio has brought out the big guns: Oprah. If Stern is the King of All Media, Oprah is surely the Supreme Queen of All Things Important (acronym: SQATI).
Howard's pre-broadcast run pushed new Sirius subscribers to just over 3 million. Meanwhile, XM maintained their advantage and grew to just over 6.5 million subscribers. Imagine what the Power of O could do for XM.
Oprah Winfrey signed a three-year, $55 million deal with XM Radio and will launch her new channel -- "Oprah & Friends" -- in September. It will air programming on fitness, health and self-improvement topics with personalities that appear on Winfrey's TV program, "The Oprah Winfrey Show," as well as in O, The Oprah Magazine. It will also feature a weekly radio show with Winfrey and Gayle King.
Her $55 million, 3-year contract is not in the same league as Stern's $500 million, 5-year contract or even XM's $650 million, 11-year contract with Major League Baseball.
Which do you think will have the most impact, though?
full article, click here
posted by Unknown @ Thursday, February 09, 2006,
