Sirius free two-day event was widely publicized - from on-air promos, to multi-lingual press releases, to commercial spots chanting "Howard! Howard!" - they pushed it hard. The question remains though whether this was effective in driving new subscribers... and that question will likely not be answered for a few months.
What we can do though, is look at traffic numbers.
According to Hitwise, traffic to Sirius' website was up 91% on October 25th compared to the week before and up 201% when compared to the same day a year ago.
And while I loathe referring to Alexa data now (it seems to be getting less and less accurate), it does show Sirius' traffic numbers nearly doubling from its average levels.
Looking at the Yahoo Buzz Index, which scores according to Yahoo searches, shows that searches for "Sirius" jumped 78% on October 25th over the Monday before. Searches for "Howard Stern" went up 51% over the same weekly period as well. Google Trends, on the otherhand, shows no change in searches (perhaps it's not updated yet?).
For some hard numbers to compare this with: Sirius.com drew in 1.75 million unique users in September, while HowardStern.com grabbed 832,000 (XMradio.com drew in 2 million unique users in September as well).
The interest in Sirius and Howard Stern, at least for a free-trial, did cause a significant spike in traffic last week. If we're to assume the same numbers as in September, that's an average of ~60,000 unique visitors a day to Sirius' website. So a 91% increase would work out to just under 115,000 unique daily vistors for those two days. Not too shabby. Whether or not this translated to paying subscribers? Well, that's a different matter.
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It had to be a lot higher than 115,000. Didn't Stern say there were 42,000,000 listening online? That would mean that on average 365 people were listening for every visitor to the site.
He wouldn't exaggerate this would he?
Delusional old lady. Why lie to make yourself seem relevant.
Gee, these numbers are in direct conflict with Frank Curzio and thestreet.com. I wonder what Frank is typing now? I know he is going to write a correction to his articles.
He was joking when he said 42 million were listening are you kidding
Ryan, possibly a mathamatical extrapolation error. 115K isn't correct I respectfully submit.
>>> He wouldn't exaggerate this would he?
Howard, lie about his audience size? Of course not.
While I am tired of hearing Howard ramble on about Sirius and his audience size, the 42M was definitely a joke. Someone threw out a number like 15M, he said something around 42M, and then some idiot reporter printed it. To his 'credit' he didn't know where that number came from when he read the article on Monday (no more Friday Howard for you).
I would like to see an hour by hour breakdown. Here is why. Many Stern fans work.. infact most americans work. Once at work and out of your car. There is no Satellite available. I want to know if the hits grew at 8 am and then again at 9 am EST showing people tuning in to the rest of the show that they were listening to on the way to work. Another blog site compared their hits to Sirius's results from Alexa and came up with a grand total of about 800,000 hits. (Not individule users) This number fits quite nicely with a % of the Sirius subscribing Stern fans that may have internet access.
I signed up for the free trial, yet I have no intention of subscribing. I'm sure I'm not the only one who was just checking in out 'cause it was free. BTW, Howard was a bore.
This was from marksfriggin.com not some Howard bashing article. "Howard started off the show talking about the two free days of SIRIUS that were going on with their internet service. Howard claimed that they had 25 million people listening and then it went up to 42 million."
Even at 25 million that means 217 instead of 365. Its still ridiculous.
I signed up for the free internet trial to hear Howard Stern. I must say that I was extremely disappointed. What happened to Howard? His show was not at all the quality show he had when he was on FM radio. He is no longer funny and his new show on Sirius is totally boring. Not worth the price that Sirius wants for internet listeners. I was also disappointed that the sound quality wasn't that great and the show kept getting interupted because of buffering problems.
Oh my...He was Joking , they all laughed when he said 25 -42 million. Why don't you listen to the show?
"Why don't you listen to the show?"
Because it sucks!
"Because it sucks!"
oooh..what a burn...go pat yourself on the back.
I tuned in for the free trial and decided to install Sirius today in my new Tahoe. I disabled my XM, even if its free for a year, and installed the Sportster 4 for my SUV and picked up the Stilleto for my personal use.
It was so great to hear Howard again after 4 years of no show. I love my Sirius and it's great to hear Howard again. Really great shows all week and looking forward to more.