Sirius Satellite Radio Inc. disclosed in a recent SEC filing that a hearing in the arbitration with U.S. Electronics is scheduled to start next month.

U.S. Electronics, which has most recently opposed the Sirius-XM merger, filed suit against Sirius last year seeking approximately $48 million in damages.

According to the most recent SEC filing, Sirius disclosed that U.S. Electronics is now seeking between $75 million and $110 million in damages.

The former distributor and manufacturer alleges that Sirius breached their contract; failed to pay monies owed; tortiously interfered with U.S. Electronics' relationships with retailers and manufacturers; withheld information relating to the FCC's inquiring into Sirius radios that include FM modulators... and otherwise acted in bad faith.

Sirius believes that a substantial portion of the damages sought by U.S. Electronics are barred by the limitation of liability provisions contained in their contract.

The hearing in this arbitration is scheduled to begin in March 2008, according to the filing.

Sirius will be offering unprecedented access the the first pastoral visit of His Holiness Pope Benedict XVI to the United States from April 15th through April 20th.

The Catholic Channel (ch 159) will cover the first visit to the U.S. by a Pope since 1999 (it's also the first time the Pope has been to Washington since 1979). The channel will provide hourly updates with the latest news and information on the Pope's activities during his visit, live coverage of all the major events, and more.

Sirius will also dedicate multiple channels to the Pope's visit, to provide listeners with simultaneous access to Papal events, commentary, and rare archival recordings of Masses and speeches from historic Papal visits - which will include, among others, Pope John Paul II's 1995 address to the United Nations General Assembly.

To update a previous article published today, Sirius Satellite Radio Inc. actually spent $1.4 million to lobbyists in 2007.

Why the discrepancy? Because the Associated Press in their report (which I cited) only noted the disclosure made by Wiley Rein LLP. Sirius actually hired four additional lobbyists, which the AP did not report on.

Lobbyists are required to disclose any activities that could influence members of the executive and legislative branches under federal law.

Aside from Wiley Rein, which received the lionshare of lobbying expenditures (at $400k), Sirius also hired Paul Laxalt Group ($100k), Quinn Gillespi & Associates ($100k), Amani Group ($60k) and Richetti, Inc ($90k).

According to disclosure forms posted by the Senate's public records office, Sirius paid these firms a total of $750,000 in the second-half of 2007. Also, according to the Senate's public records office, Sirius spent $650,000 in the first-half of 2007 - the company had not hired the Amani Group until August.

In total, Sirius spent $1.4 million combined on these lobby groups in 2007.

View the additional disclosure forms for the 2nd half of 2007 after the jump...

Sirius Satellite Radio paid the firm Wiley Rein $820,000 last year to lobby Washington over its merger with XM.

The company paid $400,000 to Wiley Rein in the second half of 2007 to lobby Congress and the FCC, according to a disclosure form posted online (viewable after the jump). Sirius paid Wiley $420k in the first half of last year.

XM spent a total of $1.2 million in lobbying last year ($580k in both 1H07 and 2H07).

While that may seem like a lot of money, it's nothing compared to the NAB, who spent $4.3 million in the first-half of last year alone.

[AP]

Directed Electronics has just shipped its next-gen Sirius home tuner that adds second-zone capability, integration with multiroom-audio systems, video outputs to display metadata on a TV and recording capability.

The SR-H1000 Sirius tuner has a retail price of $349.99 and with the addition of the optional SiriusConnect Home Tuner (SCH1 - about $49), the SR-H1000 can turn into a dual audio stream/zone tuner  - meaning that it's capable of receiving two different Sirius programs at one time.

Polk's SR-H1000 also features an Instant Replay feature which stores up to 44 minutes of audio for playback later.

Want to display channel, artist and song title metadata on your TV? Sure, just plug in the composite (RCA) video output. An Optical digital output allows the unit to be directly connected to audio components with digital inputs for lossless, pure performance. Stereo analog RCA-type outputs allow the SR-H1000 tuner to connect to any stereo receiver or amplifier. A built-in Digital to Analog Converter ensures that even analog connections have superior sound quality.

What's in the box: The SR-H1000 comes complete with rack mount ears for easy installation into equipment racks, RCA audio cables, Fiber Optic digital audio cable, remote control, and antenna.

Look for this sweet Sirius tuner at your favorite Sirius-dealer.

Since OEM sales account for a majority of satellite radio subscribers, it's a no-brainer that Sirius CEO Mel Karmazin said that the company would be actively targeting used-car sales in the months ahead.

"We are also very focused on the used car channel which accounts for over 40 million vehicles sales per year," said Karmazin during yesterday's earnings call.

"In 2008 we will target to launch a certified pre-owned program with each of our OEM partners. In fact, we launched Ford this month. Over the next three to five years this segment represents a very significant opportunity to offer factory-installed Sirius Radio to 2nd and 3rd owners at very attractive economics."

XM announced a certified pre-owned program for Acura in late 2006, and one with Honda in early 2007. At the time, XM expected that the combination of both used-car programs would grow to more than 55,000 XM-installed vehicles in 2008.

[via RadioInk]
Photo courtesy of Jalopnik

Country music star Alan Jackson will be taking over Sirius Satellite Radio's Prime Country channel - effectively renaming the channel to "Alan Jackson Good Time Radio" - albeit temporarily.

The 5-day feature will include a preview of the 17 songs on his new album, appropriately entitled Good Time, which is due to be released on March 4th.

Alan Jackson is the definitive "country music star" - amassing numerous awards over his 18-year career. Jackson received a Grammy for "Best Country Song" (for "Where Were You (When The World Stopped Turning)"), is a 3-time CMA Entertainer of the Year, not to mention the thirty-one #1 singles.

"Alan Jackson Good Time Radio" will premiere this Friday, February 29th at 5pm ET and run through Tuesday, March 4th on Sirius channel 61.

[Sirius]

Mel Karmazin was noticeably frustrated with the current state of advertising sales on today's conference call with analysts.

Sirius Satellite Radio Inc. reached nearly $35 million in advertising sales revenue for the year (see financials here).

Still, the company's CEO was admittedly displeased with their performance when asked about the longterm potential of advertising revenue.

"It's been a source of frustration for me because I believe that we ought to be generating significantly more advertising revenue than we have done so far," said Karmazin.

"We're doing about $35 million and it's up dramatically and I can give you the spin story that says how well we've done but when you take a look at having Howard Stern for the first time in his career having a pure national platform and being as strong as he is, we ought to be doing a better job in selling Howard.

"We ought to be doing a better job than we are doing now," he added.

"I had said on a call two years ago that I would like to see advertising represent 10% of our revenue. That is something that we've not achieved. There is no reason that I can think of as to why we shouldn't one day be able to achieve it and that's doing it without ever putting a commercial on our commercial free music stations.

"We ought to be doing a far better job of convincing advertisers that satellite radio, this new industry deserves to get more of their advertising dollars."

Sirius disclosed today at the investor conference call that the company will delay the launch of their new satellite.

When asked about the status of Sirius' satellite launches, Sirius CFO David Frear said that the company will defer the launch of the Sirius 5 satellite from the fourth quarter of 2008 to the second quarter of 2009.

"There is nothing particularly notable about the delay," Frear said during the call.

"We don't really need the satellite from an operational perspective until mid-2010, so just based on the pacing of the program, we have elected to defer the launch by a few months," he added.

Sirius announced in mid-2006 that they plan to augment their constellation by launching a new geosynchronous satellite. Sirius 5, manufactured by Space Systems/Loral, will have an end-of-life power capability at more than 20 kilowatts and be one of the most powerful ever constructed.

Sirius Satellite Radio Inc. (SIRI) posted a narrower loss for the fourth quarter, driven by the highest annual gross subscriber growth is satellite radio history.

The company saw a 45% increase in revenue to $922.1 million, and ended 4Q07 with positive free cash flow. Sirius also ended 2H07 with positive free cash flow (which is great news).

Sirius ended the year with 8,321,785 subscribers, up 38% from 6,024,555 subscribers at the end of 2006. Retail subs increased 15% to 4,640,709; OEM subs increased 87% to 3,665,632.

4Q07 total revenue increased 29% to $249.8 million from fourth quarter 2006 revenue of $193.4 million.

ARPU was $10.46 in 2007 and $10.05 for the fourth quarter 2007. Average self-pay monthly churn was 1.6% in 2007, and all-in average monthly churn for 2007 was 2.2%. For the fourth quarter 2007 average self-pay monthly churn was 1.7% and all-in churn was 2.3%.

SAC per gross subscriber addition was $101 for 2007 improving 11% over 2006's SAC per gross subscriber addition of $114. SAC per gross add was $90.

Sirius reported a net loss of ($565.3) million, or ($0.39) per share, for 2007; for 4Q07 the net loss was ($166.2) million, or ($0.11) per share.

The adjusted loss from operations for 2007 improved to ($327.4) million, as compared to the adjusted loss from operations of ($513.1) million in 2006. For 4Q07, the adjusted loss from operations was ($107.2) million, an improvement of 36% as compared with the ($166.8) million adjusted loss from operations in the fourth quarter 2006.

Sirius reported a full-year 2007 free cash flow loss of ($218.6), a 56% improvement over the 2006 free cash flow loss of ($500.7) million. The company posted positive free cash flow in the fourth quarter of 2007 of $75.9 million, up 150% from the $30.4 million in positive free cash flow reported in the fourth quarter of 2006.

For the first time in the company's history, Sirius also posted positive free cash flow of $8.1 million for the second half of the year.

See the full financials after the jump...