TORONTO, Feb. 13 - SIRIUS Canada Inc., Canada’s fastest growing
satellite radio provider with 110 full-time channels, announced today that it
has surpassed 300,000 paying subscribers nationwide, with more than 100,000 of
those subscribers joining since November 22, 2006.

During the 2006 holiday season, more than 3,500 retail locations
throughout Canada were fully stocked with SIRIUS’ latest plug-and-play and
portable radios including the Sportster 4 and cutting-edge Stiletto 100.
According to independent retail tracking research provided by the NPD Group,
SIRIUS was the preferred choice for satellite radio this holiday season with
nearly 8 out of 10 satellite radio shoppers choosing SIRIUS in December. Since
January 2006, SIRIUS has led the satellite radio industry in Canada with 75
per cent market share, within NPD’s measured channels.(*)

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The NASCAR/Team Talk page on sirius.com has announced 9 of the 10 drivers for this Sunday’s Daytona 500. It’s up to the fans to vote for the 10th driver. Here is the line up so far:

# 8 - Dale Earnhardt Jr. - Ch. 125
# 9 - Kasey Kahne - Ch. 114
# 11 - Denny Hamlin - Ch. 144
# 17 - Matt Kenseth - Ch. 130
# 20 - Tony Stewart - Ch. 126
# 24 - Jeff Gordon - Ch. 121
# 29 - Kevin Harvick - Ch. 119
# 31 - Jeff Burton - Ch. 147
# 48 - Jimmie Johnson - Ch. 122
# ?? - Fan’s Choice - Ch. 140

Go here to vote your favorite driver into the 10th position.

Howard Stern has told his audience not to refer to him by his full name any longer. According to one report, he has become angered by the media, and even some of the public, confusing him with Howard K. Stern, lawyer and partner of recently deceased Anna Nicole Smith. One case of mistaken identity in an Australian newspaper states that Smith’s partner, Howard K. Stern, is the shock jock and father of Smith’s youngest child. The shock jock formerly known as the King of All Media now wishes to be known simply as “the Howard”.

Looks like the Forbes.com video might have been correct, somewhat… Both SIRIUS and XM have announced today when they will report. SIRIUS will announce on February 27.  Read the press release from SIRIUS below:

SIRIUS Satellite Radio today announced that it plans to release 2006 financial and operating results on February 27, 2007.

SIRIUS also plans to hold a conference call at 8:00 am ET to discuss these results. Investors and the press can listen to the conference call via the company’s website, http://www.sirius.com, and on its satellite radio service by tuning to SIRIUS Channel 122.

A replay of the call will be available on the company’s website.

XM will announce their results the day before.

On February 14th, 2002, Sirius Satellite Radio launched service with a kick-off party at Cowboy Maloney’s Electric City in Jackson, MS. Also on that date, Sirius Backstage launched, starting as a fan page on technobistro.com. Over the next five years, while Sirius became the premier satellite radio provider, Sirius Backstage became the number one fansite for all things Sirius.

All this week Sirius Backstage looks back on five years of Sirius Satellite Radio. We have plenty of old advertisements, pics of prototype radios, channel lineups, and so on to talk about. From the loss of I-90 to the gain of Howard and everything in between. Today, we start with how Sirius came to be, the launch, and up to the end of 2002:

1990: Satellite CD Radio is formed, in order to buy spectrum the FCC is auctioning off for a “Digital Audio Radio Service”. They are competing with three other companies, including American Mobile Radio Corporation, now known as XM Radio.

1992: The company’s name changes to CD Radio

1994: CD Radio goes public with the ticker symbol CDRD, raising $7.5 million. They promise that when they start service, it will include 30 music stations and charge less than $10 per month

1997: CD Radio wins the auction, along with American Mobile, to acquire spectrum, and pays over $80 million for it.

June 1999: CD Radio signs agreement with Ford to be the exclusive satellite radio company for Ford vehicles.

November 18, 1999: CD Radio is renamed Sirius Satellite Radio. Ticker symbol changes to SIRI in January 2000.

2000: Sirius launches their three satellites June 30th, September 5th, and November 30th, 2000.

February 2000: Sirius and XM announce that they will work to form a satellite radio receiver that receives both signals.

Mid-2001: ClubXM launches, and quickly becomes the largest fan site and forum(at that time) for satellite radio.

2001: Sirius chipsets made by Lucent were not working properly, and delayed the company well past the original start date of early 2001. Shareholders sued, claiming that Sirius made false claims and knowingly lied when they stated service would start in 2001.

May 2001: Sirius announces it plans to charge $12.95 for the service, $3/month more than they stated before.

February 14, 2002: They launch their service at Cowboy Maloney’s in Jackson, MS. One young man named Jeff who went to Tulane University was there and took some pictures(and more here). He wanted to show the world, and Sirius Backstage was born.

Service was slowly rolled out over the spring of 2002, with the full nationwide launch on July 1st, 2002. The first radios included the Jensen SSR2000(left), which involved mounting a tuner box behind the Dash or under your seat. This baby loved to give off heat, and it could almost double as a skillet. Other radios available at the time of launch included the Audiovox Universal FM System. The Audiovox is also the only aftermarket add-on radio that had the same design for both XM and Sirius

June 20, 2002: A Sirius commercial airs on MTV, this is vastly different from most of their other ad campaigns so far.

August 15, 2002: XMFan is created as a joint venture by Ryan Morris and ‘Ziggy’.

September 20, 2002: As Club XM owners and moderators start losing their motivation, Jeff launches the Sirius Backstage forums in order to provide a new home for Sirius fans.

The image above is what people got to see for about 5 seconds every time they loaded a forum page; thankfully we haven’t had that for about 3 years now.

October 2002: Sirius announces a reorganization of the company’s debt, exchanging $1.5 billion of company debt, preferred stock, and cash for common stock, and causing the number of outstanding shares to increase tenfold, from less than 100 million to one billion.

October 7, 2002: Sirius announces Crispin as their ad agency. The agency would later produce the ‘it’s_ON’ ads for Sirius.

Fall 2002: Popular Science has a blurb about a new boombox(right). It has a Sirius tuner built-in, was supposed to be released by Kenwood(although the boombox itself was branded Jensen), and cost $500.

November 2002: New FM-modulated tuners are released, including ones by Kenwood, Panasonic, and Clarion.

November 4, 2002: I-60, the station for 60s Hits comes online. I-90 is taken off to make room.

November 15, 2002: Hertz to start installing Sirius in its vehicles.

December 31, 2002: Sirius ends the year with 29,947 subscribers

Tomorrow we will cover 2003: From ad campaigns and huge lineup changes to consultants and cool radio prototypes, 2003 had it all.

While most sports have their most important event at the end of the season, in the world of NASCAR the Daytona 500 is at the very beginning. Right now, we’re in the middle of Speedweeks 2007 at the Daytona International Speedway. Tony Stewart, host of the Tony Stewart Live show on SIRIUS NASCAR Radio Ch. 128 and driver of the #20 Home Depot car, wons his third Budweiser Shootout Saturday night. The Craftsman Truck Series and Busch Series will race on Friday and Satruday evenings respectively. The Daytona 500 will be on SIRIUS with the call from MRN Radio on Ch. 128. This coming weekend will also be the debut of the Team Talk channels. The NASCAR Team Talk page on sirius.com says:

NASCAR® fans will get inside access to critical mid-race decisions like these, when SIRIUS takes listeners into the cars with as many as 10 team talk channels during NASCAR NEXTEL Cup Series™ races. Listeners will feel like they are on top of their favorite team’s pit box with in-car audio of the driver and crew chief in high-speed and high-stakes debates about pitting strategies, car adjustments and track conditions. And each channel will combine the overall race broadcast with the in-car audio, so fans can follow their favorite driver and the entire field on the same channel.

Look at the NASCAR Team Talk page or call the SIRIUS Listener Line (877-33-SIRIUS) for channel assignments later in the week.

It was announced during Smoke’s show last week that NASCAR president Mike Helton would be on the show. Tony’s show can be heard live on Ch. 128 at 8pm ET. Watch the NASCAR page on sirius.com for updates.

Also, here at SiriusBackstage, we’ve added a new forum called NASCAR on SIRIUS for discussion of Every Race and Everything In Between.

Via SatRad Tech World and Orbitcast:

Sirius Satellite Radio has patented an antenna that improves both satellite and terrestrial signal reception. This “modular patch antenna” involves three parts:

The first section uses a “metal plated radiating layer” optimized for satellite reception;
The second part is a dielectric layer for optimized for terrestrial reception;
And the third layer is a metal plated ground layer.
The first layer and third layers could be made of any number of metals including Silver, Gold, Copper, Nickel and Aluminum. The second layer would be made out of Teflon, polytetrafluoroethylene (say that 3-times fast), glass, ceramic, aluminum, a polymer, silica, and quartz.

In short, the antenna would be more gooder, and Sirius patented it.

Thanks KTMC!

Forbes.com has a video news story that claims that Sirius and XM could be having their earnings reports on Monday. They say their source is Lucas Binder of UBS, but I’m not sure where Lucas got that information. Neither company has announced when they will release their 4th quarter and full year financial numbers(even though it is generally around this time), but odds are they wouldn’t release them without notice, especially together.

The only way that either one of them will be releasing numbers on Monday is either because they are filing for bankruptcy, which is very unlikely due to the large amount of financing each can easily acquire, or the M-word, which would be a surprise joint announcement from both with their fourth quarter numbers. Neither of these options are very likely, so let’s file this rumor away for now. Usually when they announce earnings, they give at least a week’s notice of when it is happening.

Whew! It looks like we need another post about the lineup changes. The third and fourth updates to the last ‘update’ thread would have been too much!

First, we have confirmed that a relatively high-up Sirius Canada employee has stated that, at least for Canada, they are losing ABC News and Talk, EWTN, ESPN Deportes, and Hot Jamz. It should be duly noted though that counting what they say they are gaining and losing, it evens out. They are required under Canadian law to cap the number of total number of channels available at 10x the Canadian programmed channels, and they are maxed out currently, so any channel additions require one to be deleted as well. If any of those four are leaving the American lineup, EWTN is the most likely candidate due to having similar content to The Catholic Channel, and the two stations could merge.

Now, here is what Sirius or a third party has confirmed either over the air, or on their website, effective 2/14:

-The Who Channel is moving to channel 29, according to Sirius.com

-Sirius Disorder is moving to channel 32, according to a DJ on the station

-C-SPAN Radio will be leaving the lineup according to C-SPAN

-The Foxxhole, Jamie Foxx’s new “Urban Lifestyles” channel, will launch on 106

-OutQ will be moving from channel 106 to 109

-Reggae Rhythms is moving channel 97.

Here is what we have heard from one or more sources, but Sirius has not officially released the information:

-A channel tentatively named “frequency 24″ and feature 90s Rock will be on channel 24

-Revolution will be taken off the air

-Starting April 1st, a punk rock station will replace The Who Channel on 29 according to DJ Long Paul.

-Rumors persisted of an artist-showcase channel, but it does not fit in with the rest of the rumors. If it were to happen, odds are the Who would go there rather than to the future punk station. There are two other possibilities though: there could be a dedicated artist showcase channel that will start with another group that would conflict with The Who ending 3/31 when The Who tour ends. The other possibility is that there won’t be a punk rock channel, and Sirius will just make channel 29 an artist-rotation channel. All we know now is that Sirius is trying to be like Apple, and keep mum on the updates for now.

Update 2/12: Sirius has posted Reggae Rhythms is moving to channel 97 on 2/14, so that gets moved from the strongly rumored to confirmed category.

SIRIUS Backstage is looking for some new recruits, so we’re issuing an open call for new writers. If you live and breathe SIRIUS, this is your chance to be heard. Professional writing experience isn’t critical (though it doesn’t hurt); all we really care about is that you can stay on top of the news and write about SIRIUS.

Here’s what you need to send to apply:

• Two sample posts written for SIRIUS Backstage. These sample posts can be about whatever you want, but they should seem like they could have been on the front page of the site.
• A few words about yourself.
• A list of the SIRIUS radio(s) you have or have had in the past.
• A few things about SIRIUS that interests you.
• Your internet contact info (email, IM, etc. - no home address or phone number needed).
• How much time per week you can commit to blogging. Be realistic, okay?
• Oh, and no attachments or resumes.

We will only review fully completed applications. To apply, please use the Contact Us form for the site and select “Blog Editor Sign-up”.

We’re not sure how many of these we’ll get, so give us a little time to look them over.

Our open call for bloggers is now closed.