Satellite Radio Still Reaches for the Payday
By TIM ARANGO
DID you hear what Howard Stern said the other day? Neither did we. But we read about it on a blog.
...by switching to satellite radio three years ago, Mr. Stern swapped cultural cachet for big money.
Then — poof! — Mr. Stern all but disappeared. Even Jay Leno, during a recent interview with The New York Times about his decision to stay at NBC to host a prime-time show, cited Mr. Stern as an example of the dangers of obscurity.
“On radio, Howard to me was a populist. The truck driver, the average guy would listen in the cafe, the truck, the old car that’s 50 years old and still has an AM radio,” said Mr. Leno in the interview. “But I don’t hear him quoted anymore. People don’t say: ‘Hey, did you hear what Howard said today?’ ”
The company has never turned a profit and cannot predict when it ever will.
“I don’t think that the performance of the stock is related to the performance of the company, it’s related to the balance sheet of the company and the need for the company to refinance.” - Mel Karmazin
Sirius XM simply isn’t a blue-chip stock like General Electric, so the interest the company would have to pay to raise funds is likely to be exorbitant. Mr. Karmazin said many lenders are willing to refinance, “but they are interested in it at very unattractive terms.”
...Sirius XM does have a serious flaw in its capital structure. Its costs, which include servicing its pile of debt, appear to be too high to make the business viable.
