Sirius Satellite Radio has hired two of the radio industry's most respected and accomplished advertising executives, Sam Benrubi and Stephen Smith, to help build advertising revenue on its non-music channels.
The appointments follow key programming announcements that enhance advertisers' ability to buy time on Sirius to reach a national audience. Recent programming announcements include this week's announcement that SIRIUS will be the new home of NASCAR in 2007; Sirius will sell all advertising time on its NASCAR channel and during the race broadcasts.
Sam Benrubi, a senior nationwide advertising executive who has led network and local sales teams at Westwood One and Infinity Broadcasting, was named Senior Vice President, Advertising Sales. Benrubi will lead a team committed to developing long-term relationships with national advertisers and developing a strong stream of revenues from advertising to complement SIRIUS' fast-growing revenues from subscribers. Benrubi will report directly to Greenstein. Benrubi has had experience with ad sales for Imus in the Morning and the Howard Stern shows on WNBC-AM over 20 years ago.
Reporting to Benrubi will be Stephen Smith, who was named Vice President, Advertising Sales. Smith has years of experience in national radio advertising sales for sports and in marketing Howard Stern's radio program to national advertisers. He began his broadcasting sales career with Blair Television in 1990, and subsequently was a senior account executive at both Group W Radio Sales and WXRK-FM in New York. Most recently, Smith held several key management positions at WFAN-AM in New York, before joining Sirius.
Mel Karmazin has expressed his desire to sell advertising on the company's non-music stations. At the recent McGraw-Hill Media Summit, Mel said that although Sirius will run advertising on Howard Stern's show, the amount of advertising will be less than that currently airing on his Viacom radio show. (thank god)
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