Superstar CEO Mel Karmazin said on Thursday that Sirius' holiday sales were strong, but might fall short of last year's subscriptions.

"Business is very strong, very good," Karmazin told the Reuters Media Summit in New York. But he added: "We have a very difficult comparison this fourth quarter."

"Assuming that we have a very good last 10 days, then we'll be just fine," Karmazin said. Last year Sirius signed up around 500,000 new subscribers in a 10 day period.

"If in fact, God forbid, we don't, December will go from being what we hope it will be, which will be the very best month in our history, to the second-best month. But no matter what, it's amazingly strong."

Sirius is offering a free Home Kit or Vehicle Kit when purchased with the Stiletto 100 or Stiletto 10 from 11-23-06 to 12-31-06. The rebate is technically a $70 off coupon, but since both the Home and Car kit go for about $70... well, you can do the math.

Go here for the rebate form (PDF). This discount is valid at most retailers excluding Sam's Club, Target and Wal-Mart (pssst! help support this site: check out our sponsors to your right).

Thanks realwx! 

Sirius has unveiled their programming initiative when the NASCAR torch is handed over from XM to Sirius in 2007.

Sirius will combine live race broadcasts with up to 10 additional "Team Talk" channels featuring the driver-to-crew communications of different race teams during NASCAR NEXTEL Cup Series races. So you'll be able to follow the overall race call and the in-car audio of a driver on a single channel throughout the race.

The channels will feature top drivers based on the NASCAR NEXTEL Cup Series standings. The lineup of drivers and their channel assignments will be available at www.sirius.com/nascar before each race.

Sirius will broadcast every NASCAR NEXTEL Cup Series, NASCAR Busch Series and NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series race, carrying the live broadcasts of Motor Racing Network (MRN), Performance Racing Network (PRN) and the IMS Radio Network's broadcast from Indianapolis Motor Speedway.

On top of all this live race coverage, Sirius will launch SIRIUS NASCAR Radio (ch 128) which will include live races, plus daily and weekly talk programs, including "Tony Stewart Live."

More details, schedules and hosts on SIRIUS NASCAR Radio will be announced soon.

Satellite Video, or Satellite Radio Video, or SVOD (Subscription Video On Demand), or whatever the heck it would be called. It's something that's been talked about by both Sirius and XM for quite some time now.

Sirius has brought up a video service since early 2004. Along the way Sirius has said that their mobile in-car video services would provide children's content in a live format, and would be available by the second half of this year as part of their OEM offering. We even know that Sirius plans to use Microsoft's Windows Media Player 9.

XM demonstrated their own in-car satellite video at CES last year, and even went so far as to demonstrate a live wearable video player to analysts in the beginning of this year. XM has partnered with On2 to provide their video compression technology.

The efforts even extend into Canada where XM Canada and Sirius Canada both talked up satellite video with an expected release for late-2006.

But the question isn't "if" this will happen, or even "when" (because a delay at this point wouldn't surprise anyone - it's almost December afterall) - the question is... how?

The experience needs to be something that consumers will actually find useful. It can't just be music videos or clips of Despirate Housewives. This isn't the iPod audience per se (though it will be compared to the iPod nearly instanteously). If the target distribution market is vehicles, then the audience to appeal to should definitely be kids. Sirius has a good hunch here.

But big name content providers aren't going to sign on board immediately. They sure as hell didn't when iTunes started offering video, though maybe since the landscape has changed so has the mindset of entertainment companies. But most likely the content would need to be either created in-house or by current VOD content providers. I personally love the content provided by Comcast's Select On Demand for my kids, and similar providers would be quite open to working with both satcasters.

Then there's social video. Verizon partnered with YouTube (but as a neutered version), and a similar style of approach isn't inconceivable. But it couldn't be the only content provided, and would be best for a handheld video player rather than a rear seat video application.

For the in-house route, the obvious choice would be to make the satellite video offering an extension of the core satellite radio services. So you could see the action in-studio, or watch whatever the hosts are talking about. This works great for the talk channels.

Aside from children's content, YouTube-style videos or in-studio shenanegans - what would be on your "wishlist" for content if/when Sirius and XM unveil this technology to the masses?

Sirius Satellite Radio Chairman Joe Clayton had his beautiful home featured in Electronic House, and it's absolutely gorgeous.

The 16,000-sqft English mansion is set on 5.5 acres overlooking the 18th hole of a golf course. And it's wired to the gills.

Twenty zones of audio inside and another eight on the manicured grounds, pool area and tennis courts. Kaleidescape video server. Two Fireball music servers. Six Dish HD receivers with HD DVRs. And of course, six Sirius Satellite Radio receivers.

Beautiful pics and more info in the article. Very impressive. 

[Electronic House] 

Psychic medium, author, and lecturer Mary Occhino (aka "Mary O") will host "Angels on Call," a new live daily call-in talk show on SIRIUS Satellite Radio.

Debuting on Monday, December 11th "Angels on Call" is the first live daily morning talk show on SIRIUS Stars (ch 102). It will air live Monday - Friday from 8am - 11am ET.

"Angels on Call with Mary O" will feature Mary Occhino talking with listeners and offering personal psychic readings. Mary O will also make predictions for listeners' futures, as well as guide them through the personal issues and problems they face in the present.

Mary O has been a regular guest on "Deepak Chopra's Wellness Radio."

In a recent report released by Bank of America Analyst Jonathan Jacoby, it was stated that channel checks with retail buyers (not sellers) indicate that gross retail sales will decline by 20% in the fourth quarter.

Now, that's down 20% year-over-year, mind you. Last year around this time there was a frenzy in retail as Howard Stern's departure from terrestrial was only three weeks away. So a YoY decline of only 20% is actually, not too shabby. Considering the hype and hooplah that surrounded the industry in 2005, a mere drop of 20% is a good sign of the industry's strength in my opinion.

So let's take a look at some different areas of interest now that Black Friday and Cyber Monday are behind us. First, here's the Alexa traffic numbers during a 7-day period:

This shows that Sirius still leads XM in traffic, a look at a one-month period shows Sirius benefitting much more from weekday traffic than XM as well. Traffic can be inferred as a level of interest - not necessarily in sales, but in product research. Net-savvy users will research their options for their holiday shopping ahead of time. Sirius seems to be doing well.

A look at Amazon's Car Electronics best sellers shows satellite radio clearly dominating the category, with more XM products in the lead. Amazon's Satellite Radio category shows a similar favor towards XM. It's not all peaches and cream though, because satellite radio is no where to be seen in the Electronics category.

Looking at eBay's Consumer Electronics category shows a fair number of satellite radios being listed (nearly 6,000 items in total - the key would be to see this number grow in the coming weeks). The wearable/handheld units seem to be the most popular on eBay, which is really no surprise.

Now ShopperTrak estimated that Black Friday sales were up 6% from last year, but it was flat-panel TVs and computers that dominated the consumer electronics category. Unfortunately "Cyber Monday" ended up being a bust... well, not a bust necessarily, but just yet another holiday shopping day. While Microsoft's Xbox 360 Core sold out in 30-seconds for Amazon's door-buster campaign; the much hyped (and ugly) Microsoft Zune is falling fast on sales charts. There's a lot of competition this season for satellite radio, and nothing is a guarantee.

Remember, last year SIRIUS added 1,142,640 net subscribers and XM added 898,315 net subscribers in the fourth quarter (Gross Subscribers: 1,266,674 and 1,373,876 respectively). During the same period SIRIUS added 900,645 net retail subscribers, while XM added 782,420 net retail subscribers. So a 20% hit in retail - if equally applied to both XM and SIRIUS - would mean an estimated 720,516 net retail subs for SIRIUS, and an estimated 625,936 net retail subs for XM.

As a reminder, to meet guidance SIRIUS needs to add 1.18 Million net subs, and XM needs to add 515,000 to 715,000 net subs. 

Karmazin's latest comments to SmartMoney hinting toward a possible Sirius/XM merger are being eaten up by the press. Gee, who saw that coming.

No surprise as suggestions of a merger seem to get the media into a tizzy over even the slightest hint. This time around it the merger whispers haven't sent either stock soaring  though. Interesting. Perhaps investors are getting wise to this ruse. Personally, I feel it's a distraction. And a useless one at that.

But maybe Mel isn't to blame. Maybe it's the unoriginal media and their boring obvious questions. Maybe a better question to have asked Karmazin, rather than this XM/SIRIUS merger nonsense, should have been: "How is Sirius planning on beating last year's Q4 subscriber additions?"

Perhaps then we would get an answer that's truely newsworthy.

Here's some new commercials from Sirius that I haven't seen before. These are probably the best ones I've seen in a long time from Sirius. A nice cohesive concept with a clear message - "wide variety." Much better than the "guy popping up out of nowhere" commercials. (The audio is a bit messed up on the last one, but you'll get the idea.)

UPDATE: These are Sirius Canada commercials by the Rethink Agency in Vancouver. (Thanks cb!)