Wednesday, January 31, 2007

Bridge Ratings, Updated Jan. 31st

The Bridge Ratings Consumer Trend Report: Satellite Radio Q4 Subscriber Trending
Updated Wednesday January 31, 2007

Satellite Retail Off Pace with Q3 2006 - The Year's Softest Quarter

This Week's Update:
2006 ended with the satellite radio sector delivering an additional 4.5 million new subscribers for a composite total of 13.6 million for both companies. Though this was down from their original sector estimates of 15 million, the number marks a quite respectable 48% increase year over year. With Sirius off 200,000 and XM off an additional 1.4 million the year of growth for the satellite radio sector belonged to Sirius - at least from a numbers perspective.
The kick-start for Sirius was Howard Stern who officially joined the company on January 1, 2006, but nevertheless promoted Sirius for a full 12 months once Stern announced his deal on his terrestrial radio show in October 2004. Bridge Ratings' tracking of Sirius subscriptions from that moment on clearly reflected a turbo-injection of interest and awareness that was helped by Stern...read more: here