SIRIUS Satellite Radio will air Bill Bennett's Morning in America starting on May 1st on SIRIUS Patriot, SIRIUS' conservative talk channel (ch 144) from Monday - Friday from 6am - 9am ET.

William J. Bennett, former Secretary of Education and leader of federal anti-drug efforts, is also a bestselling author, established public speaker, and commentator. He served as President Reagan's chairman of the National Endowment for the Humanities (1981-1985) and Secretary of Education (1985-1988) and then President Bush's "drug czar" (1989-1990).

Bennett frequently has guests on and takes listener calls. Although he is a well-known Republican, Bennett has often crossed party lines in order to pursue important common purposes.

A real photo of the SIRIUS Sportster Replay SP4-TK1 is now available, courtesy of Crutchfield. Originally we had "artists concepts" to go by, which showed the unit having a color display, which obviously this one doesn't. I also need to note the difference in the whole product code thingy there, originally the SPTK3 and SPTK4 were the new Sportster units (one non-color, and one with a color display). So maybe we will be seeing the SP4-TK2 as the much rumored color unit?

Either way, color or not, this is one nice looking unit. About the size of the Audiovox Xpress, this definitely should be on your father's day list (hint hint).

Here's those details you all want to see:

SIRIUS Sportster Replay SP4-TK1
Cost: $169.99

• Plug-and-play SIRIUS satellite radio
• Car accessories included: cradle, suction-cup mount, power adapter, roof-mount antenna
• Internal memory continually stores the last 44 minutes of the channel you're listening to
• Built-in FM transmitter broadcasts on any FM frequency
• 6-line display
• 30 channel presets
• S-Seek lets you save up to 30 song titles or artists, and alerts you whenever one is playing on SIRIUS
• Game Alert lets you know when your favorite team is playing
• Jump button lets you go to a preprogrammed channel instantly
• Short-cut button lets you save a wireless FM transmission frequency
• Car cradle includes an auxiliary audio input
• Search by category, channel, artist, or song title
• Wireless remote control
• Dimensions: 4-1/2"W x 2-15/16"H x 5/8"D
  

Thanks solace!

Dallas Mavericks owner and famed blogger, Mark Cuban, has signed a deal with SIRIUS Satellite Radio to do a two-hour radio show called Mark Cuban's Radio Maverick, starting this summer on SIRIUS Stars, Sundays from 12pm - 2pm ET. This is definitely one show that I personally will be tuning to.

"I plan on raising hell and covering any and all topics that I think are interesting and taking no prisoners along the way," said Cuban.

Cuban has never held back from speaking his mind. He sold Broadcast.com to Yahoo! back in the dotCOM days for $5.7 billion - keeping $1.9 billion for his own pocket. In 2000, he bought the Dallas Mavericks for $280 million, which at the time was the highest price ever paid for a basketball team. Proving to be a bit of maverick himself, Cuban was slapped with the biggest NBA fine ever ($500,000) when he said of Ed Rush, the NBA director of officials, "I wouldn't hire him to manage a Dairy Queen." Dairy Queen in turn invited Cuban to run a Dairy Queen for a day. He also co-founded HDNet, a high-def TV network on DIRECTV. UPDATE: HDNet is also available on DISH Network as well as other TV service providers.

For those not familiar with Cuban, he's also a well respected blogger having run Blog Maverick for since early 2004.

SIRIUS Satellite Radio's Playboy Radio and Crown Royal have teamed up to create a special segment aimed at entertaining and educating listeners about the ins and outs of horse racing.

Playboy Radio's "Playmate on the Paddock" gives an all encompassing look at the Kentucky Derby and Triple Crown, hosted by one of Playboy's most popular Playmates-Jodi Ann Paterson, Playboy's 2000 Playmate of the Year.

The Playmate will instruct listeners how to watch a race, gauge weather and track conditions, and give early round elimination race results and commentary during the weeks leading up to the Kentucky Derby.

[Press Release via SIRIUS Backstage] 

SIRIUS Satellite Radio has chosen music legend Charlie Daniels to be the voice of Road Dog Trucking, SIRIUS Channel 147. Charlie Daniels’ classic driving song "Road Dogs" will be the official theme song of the channel, and Daniels will make personal appearances throughout the year at various trucking industry events. Charlie will make an appearance today as the first guest on the new SIRIUS show, Carl P. Mayfield & the P-Team featuring Bubba Skynyrd.

Starting today, Carl P. Mayfield & the P-Team will air weekdays in the afternoon drive time slot from 4pm to 8pm ET. Mayfield is a Nashville broadcasting legend who has been a fixture on the radio, on WKDF and WSIX, for more than 25 years.

Another new show on the channel, Hammerdown Radio with DJ RigRocker, will also launch today and will air weekdays 2pm to 4pm ET. The show features a two-hour block of road music, presented by Road Dog Trucking program director Jeremy Tepper.  Tepper, AKA DJ RigRocker, is also format manager and morning host on channel 63 Outlaw Country, and is a foremost authority on the history of truck driving music.

TWICE points out that Mel Karmazin said at the recent Morgan Stanley Global Automotive Conference that SIRIUS' Mobile Video service will definitely be live. There has been some speculation that the satellite video service would be a cached service, where the user downloads the content to storage for playback later.

"We want the consumer to have some live TV channels in the back seat. Your kid is watching Disney or Nickelodeon [in the home] and you go into the car and pick it up, right in the car," said Mel Karmazin.

 

When asked whether SIRIUS is partnering with Disney or Nickelodeon, SIRIUS Senior VP Bob Law said, "We are talking to people like that." Law also said that SIRIUS will likely unveil their satellite video technology at the International CES in January and launch the service shortly thereafter.

This contradicts earlier reports that SIRIUS' Mobile Video is on schedule for mid-2006.

When discussion the programming on SIRIUS' video service, Law said, "It's definitely going to be some live relevant broadcasting. It's not going to be something that could be duplicated by a DVD."

[TWICE] 

Light Reading has a writeup on their revised satellite radio subscriber projections, and on the conservative side, they're estimating over 17.2 Million total subscribers between SIRIUS and XM in the next 18 months.

Based on SIRIUS' growth from July 04 - March 06, SIRIUS will be growing at a rate of 243 subscribers every hour - bringing in a total of 7.1 Million subscribers in 18 months. Based on XM's growth rate from June 04 - April 06, XM will grow at a rate of 284 new subscribers an hour. That's a total of 10.1 Million subscribers in 18 months.

Obviously, there are events that cause spikes in growth - like Stern for instance. And using numbers from mid 2004 might make hourly additions a bit more conservative than necessary, but sometimes it's nice to weigh on the more conservative side.

[Light Reading] 

Three of USA Today's top seven DJs are also on SIRIUS - DJ Smallz, Whoo Kid, and Clinton Sparks. Pretty neat.

SIRIUS Backstage lets us know that SIRIUS subscribers have the opportunity of getting a free SIRIUS Satellite Radio receiver.

If you see the following graphic, it means you qualify:

Click here to log in to your account management page.

You have from April 18, 2006 through May 1, 2006 to act on this, and need to pre-pay for 6-months.

[SIRIUS Backstage] 

SIRIUS Satellite Radio will broadcast a new interview with Bruce Springsteen this Sunday, April 23rd at 10am ET, where Springsteen discusses his upcoming album We Shall Overcome: The Seeger Sessions, on SIRIUS Stars channel 102.

The interview will be rebroadcast on Monday, April 24th at 1pm and 7pm ET, and on Tuesday, April 25rd at 1pm ET, on channel 18, The Spectrum.

Springsteen’s new album features his interpretations of 13 traditional songs associated with folk artist Pete Seeger, and will be released on Tuesday, April 25th.