I really just don't know what to make of this. First the Alexa debauchery and now this from Bridge Ratings:

“It would appear now that Sirius satellite radio will not exceed our projections first published in September. After interviewing Stern listeners who actually subscribed to Sirius in October, we are projecting an improving subscriber base of over 800,000 in the fourth quarter, but this number is lower than previously expected. Though pacing is strong for both satellite companies, this quarter will see Sirius surpass XM in quarterly subscriber count!”

Originally, Bridge stated one-million new SIRIUS subscribers in Q4, but it's not the revised projections that's odd, it's the competitive statement. The SIRIUS subscriber predictions are no surprise, with SIRIUS themselves stating a similar number (3+ Million by EOY, up from 2,173,920 subscribers).

What's odd is that Bridge is essentially saying that XM will have under 800,000 subscribers in Q4. Yet XM has reaffirmed continuously that they will break 6 million subscribers (up from 5,034,642 subscribers). What gives? How can a survey of Stern listeners determine the subscriber count for a competing satellite radio service? Where's the data for that? Also, why the survey in cities other than New York (where the Stern following is the greatest)?

It just doesn't add up. 

[Bridge Ratings via R&R]

Some interesting stuff out from Citigroup today as analyst Eileen Furukawa said in a report to clients (Linkage: PDF, 500k) that "satellite radio is one of the few growth stories in media."

"In our view, satellite radio is one of the few areas within the media sector that offers attractive secular growth," Furukawa said. "The industry has already experienced robust growth from 4.4 million subscribers at the end of 2004 to our estimate of 9 million by the end of 2005."

Interesting thing to note is that they compared XMSR to AOL back-in-the-day when they were first launching. If you use AOL's peak valuation multiple when it was first ramping up subscribers, XMSR would be valued at $270. Good lord man! (Linkage: XMSR Image - 150k)

[MSN Money] 

(Note: my Acrobat keeps blowing up on me whenever I try to open the PDF, so please let me know if it doesn't work or something.) 

Last night, Jim Cramer's "Mad Money" featured XM Satellite Radio Chairman Gary Parsons on the show in a direct retort to the Nov 30th show featuring Sirius CEO Mel Karmazin [Video]. Some interesting things were mentioned including the much argued subscriber numbers between SIRIUS vs XM, and outright stating that XM would be CFBE before SIRIUS.

Rivelry aside, I do like the ending comments about how awful terrestrial is. "People like commercials, don't they?"

[Video Link]