Today during the Sirius XM Radio Inc. Q2 earnings call (live blog notes here), CEO Mel Karmazin announced that they will be launching "Satellite Radio 2.0" in retail stores for the 2011 holiday season.
That "rumor" comes from Bay Area media commentator Rich Lieberman, who writes about it on SFGate. Lieberman says that there's a "very real possibility" that Howard Stern will make a return back to terrestrial radio in 2010, according to his media tipsters out of New York.
Sirius XM Radio Inc. said on several occasions that the merging of broadcast operations was going to be an ongoing process, and now Orbitcast is hearing that another round of channel changes will be going into effect sometime around January 15th. These changes are in addition to the return of Strobe and Backspin to the Sirius XM lineup.
Earlier this month, the veiled FCC registration by "i-Sirius" caused many an eyebrow to be raised. Speculation had since ensued, with theories of potential products and partnerships (from an iPhone competitor, to a pending deal with Apple) began swimming around.
Luckily though, even though the FCC application asked for confidentiality, one of the test reports (PDF) apparently included a photo of the upcoming device (pictured).
And here's what we know:
Nothing in the test reports seem to indicate a satellite radio device. And looking at the photo, it doesn't appear that any audio controls are visible, so I would rule out any relations to Sirius here, other than the name.
If you're wondering why the stocks went nuts mid-day, that's because several sources have reported that CBS could make a bid for either XM Satellite Radio (XMSR) or Sirius Satellite Radio (SIRI).
Call me a Negative Nancy, but I don't buy it. Especially since we've heard this one before.
