Sirius XM Radio (SIRI)

          XM initiated commercial operations in September 2001; as of December 31, 2006, it provided service to approximately 7.6 million subscribers. XM currently offers 170 channels of high-quality audio entertainment throughout the United States, including music channels devoted to a wide variety of genres, such as rock, country, jazz, gospel, classical, soul, hip-hop, bluegrass, folk, and reggae; sports programming that includes live, play-by-play broadcasts of Major League Baseball and National Hockey League games, as well as college games; children’s channels; a variety of talk formats; news and religious programming; and 21 channels that transmit traffic, weather, and emergency (including Amber) alert information for many of the largest U.S. metropolitan areas. In addition, XM broadcasts emergency alerts, safety information, and Amber alerts on a 24-hour/7-days-a-week basis on a free-to-air channel (for which no subscription is required); it also participates in the national Emergency Alert System, providing Presidential Level alerts and certain state and local alerts; airs a Red Cross Radio channel when the country experiences disasters such as Hurricane Katrina; and provides real-time traffic and weather data to cars, planes, and boats equipped with XM receivers.¹¹ All of this content is up-linked from XM’s facilities—primarily its headquarters in Washington, D.C.—to its satellites and then transmitted to its subscribers. XM also provides content to subscribers using streaming audio over the Internet, as well as to certain DIRECTV subscribers, Alltel and AT&T wireless subscribers, and AOL radio members.

          XM has invested over five billion dollars to date, primarily to (1) develop and upgrade its network; (2) design chipsets and radios capable of receiving its service; (3) subsidize the cost of such chipsets and radios to encourage their distribution; (4) develop subscriber-based

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11}           See, e.g., Richard L. Collins,