In Forbes today, Bear Stearns analyst Robert Peck noted that XM's website peaked around Father's Day at levels "significantly higher" than average, indicating a possible increase in interest around the holiday. By contrast, Sirius Satellite Radio's traffic stayed within the average range - spiking after Father's Day.

Curious. This peaked my interest. So I embarked onto good ol' Alexa to get a clearer picture:

Here's the Alexa graph showing the past month's worth of reach trending. I say "trending" because Alexa is great to determine exactly that - it's not an absolute measurement. Anyway.

So xmradio.com saw a significant spike in traffic just before Father's Day, yet sirius.com saw a spike after Father's Day. This could be translated in different ways as the post-Father's Day traffic could very well be from online activations (a good sign for Sirius). While the pre-Father's Day traffic for XM could be an indication that their TV spot made a difference. Ohh the speculation.

Whatever the causes, I'm pretty much convinced that the post-Father's Day traffic is from activations or from new subscribers checking out the service. Good news since this period is so important for consumer electronics sales.

But there's one thing that doesn't add up... Stern started streaming just before Father's Day.

Bridge Ratings has released a survey that outlines the effect of digital media on terrestrial radio listening. The results are broken down on overall listenership, and then broken down by format. Overall, Internet radio caused the most amount of loss, with Satellite Radio coming in at #2. Here's the breakdown:

Satellite Radio caused 36% of respondants to listen to less traditional radio, while 23% actually listened to more radio and 41% said it had no effect. Overall, satellite radio caused a -12% loss in listening to traditional radio.

When broken down by format, here's how satellite radio listeners responded when compared to :

Time Spent with Various Media Persons 15-64

[More on FMQB]

This is pretty interesting. An article in today's Washington Times highlights the draw to Bob Dylan's show on XM Satellite Radio:

Rock legend Bob Dylan draws about 1.7 million listeners on XM Satellite Radio, making his weekly show one of the most popular that the subscription service offers, said XM President and Chief Executive Officer Hugh Panero.

Washington-based XM has more than 6 million subscribers. Mr. Panero would not tell us which programs draw the biggest audience on a daily basis, but he did say that "The Opie & Anthony Show," along with XM's comedy and news channels, tend to be the most popular.

Now, neither XM or SIRIUS expose the number of listeners for each of their channels. It's unfortunate because us fanboys would love to sit there and pick over any of these numbers - but then again, it's competitive intelligence. As long as no one is talking, why show your hand? (It would also serve as great market research for terrestrial radio.)

But XM has shown us a glimpse, here's the breakdown:

Total number of XM Radio Listeners* - 13.6 million
XM's The '70s - 2.1 million listeners
XM's The '80s - 1.9 million listeners
XM's 20-on-20 - 1.8 million listeners

* Yes, "listeners" are different than "subscribers" 

So... after seeing those numbers, knowing that Theme Time Radio Hour is bringing in about 1.7 million XM listeners is pretty damn impressive indeed.

[Washington Times] 

If you take a look at XACT's website, you'll notice that only the XACT Visor has a "buy" button next to it.

Similarly, on Directed Electronics' website the Sirius Starmate Replay, along with the Sirius One, are no longer available.

Combined with Audiovox removing both XM and Sirius radios from their website, and it definitely smells like something's up.

This is an old article about the Sirius and XM merger

Orbitcast has been relentlessly covering the satellite radio merger since the rumors began in early 2005. If you're researching the Sirius/XM merger, you may want to check the Merger tag, or the Merger Category which will give you a comprehensive listing of all articles involving the proceedings.

For the latest news, information and rumors on the Sirius-XM merger, just keep checking Orbitcast, or subscribe to the RSS feed.

Below is the archived article...

Reuters reports: SIRIUS Satellite Radio CEO Mel Karmazin said today at a conference in New York that Sirius is definitely not up for sale. But when inevitably asked the question about an XM and SIRIUS merger, he had this to say:

"Regarding XM - would we like to buy them? Sure. We'd love to buy them. Price would matter, so that would be an issue ... (and) there would definitely be the regulatory issue," said Karmazin.

Mel was very clear about one thing regarding mergers, "If we do another deal, I'm gone." Referring to the stuggles he had with Summer Redstone after the CBS/Viacom merger.

It sure is headline material. "XM and SIRIUS merger?" Stuff that newspapers lap up. But I'm going to go out on a limb here and say I'm against the idea. I've put together a list of 5 reasons why I think XM and SIRIUS should not merge after the jump...

I'm not really sure if this is a big deal or not, but it appears that Audiovox has pulled all their satellite radios from their website. That includes both Sirius and XM units.

If you go to Audiovox's website and do a model number search on "sir" (for Sirius) or "xm" (for, uhm, XM) you'll find a few antennas, boomboxes, adapters, etc - but no plug-and-play receivers or anything manufactured by Audiovox. The Audiovox satellite radio landing page shows nothing either.

Very odd.

[Audiovox: Satellite Radios]

UPDATE: If you look at the archived version of Audiovox's website, you'll notice that both "Sirius Satellite Radio" and "XM Satellite Radio" are listed in the navbar under the MOBILE section. These are no longer there. 

With XM Satellite Radio and the RIAA going head-to-head against each other, XM is making sure that the Artist Community understands their commitment to them.

It's a smart move, and a necessary one, because music is the center of satellite radio. There's also, in my opinion, no better method for unsigned artists and back-album tracks to get airplay. Terrestrial radio has abandoned them.

Another point that is being brought up over and over again, and it's a key one for artists to consider: the satellite radio industry is the single largest contributor of sound recording performance royalties to artists and record labels.

And this is an industry arguably still in its infancy. Imagine 5 years from now. This is something that the RIAA isn't grasping for some reason, or perhaps they're a lil' too greedy and those tens of millions of dollars already being paid to them just isn't enough. Disgusting.

[XM Radio Open Letter to the Artist Community]
Thanks cb!

Just as we thought, the NAB stirred the FM Modulator pot with their own testing so they could go crying to the FCC. Surprise surprise. This from Billboard Radio Monitor:

[...] NAB spokesperson Dennis Wharton says, “Our tests showed that 13 of the 17 wireless devices (76%) exceeded field strength limits set by the FCC. Six of those devices exceeded the FCC field limit by 2,000%. One device transmitted a signal that was 20,000% stronger than allowed by FCC rules. Many of the devices also transmitted signals that were substantially wider in bandwidth than permitted by the FCC, resulting in potential interference to 1st and 2nd adjacent channels as well.”

The NAB has sent letters to both FCC chairman Kevin Martin as well as Senate Commerce Committee chairman Ted Stevens and co-chairman Daniel Inouye notifying them of the results.

If they spent this much time on creating innovative programming, they'd have masterpieces.

Interesting... looks like Mr. Willie Nelson may have a new satellite radio program in the works. Aside from talking about his BioWillie biodiesel stations, my guess would be that this will feature concerts from his Willie's Place Theater.

Willie's Place Theater is a sort of full service, year-round, live music venue; reminiscent of a Branson, Missouri Opry house, boasting an 80ft stage and an intimate 850 seats. It's meant specifically for truckers - which makes broadcasts from it perfect for satellite radio. Question is... which one?

UPDATE: Interesting. The Attorney of Record is Robert A. Rosenbloum... the same Attorney of Record for the Radio Margaritaville filing. Me thinks this'll be a new SIRIUS show.
Thanks Matt!

UPDATE 2: Looks like Willie Nelson is going to XM afterall.