Many people have complained about the lack of a traditional christmas music channel on Sirius. It looks like Sirius is taking a half-step in the right direction: 5 Days of Bing Crosby’s songs and 25 years of classic holiday shows from 1938-1962. Hosted by Bing’s wife Kathryn Crosby and daughter Mary Crosby, the channel will include shows such as “Christmas Sing with Bing,” “The Bing Crosby Show,” and “Philco Radio Time.”

Guests on include Frank Sinatra, Ella Fitzgerald, The Andrews Sisters, Bob Hope, Jimmy Stewart, Peggy Lee, among others.

The channel will be on 119, replacing Sports Play by Play 4. If Sirius does this correctly, they will allocate the station the bandwidth of what a regular music channel has.

Hopefully this encourages Sirius to add a traditional Christmas radio channel next year, or at the very least import XM’s if the merger goes through.

Barack Obama will be sitting down with former Senator and current Sirius host Bill Bradley for an in-depth interview discussing his history and his issues. This is the second in a series of presidential interviews for Bradley, after interviewing John Edwards last month.

Some quotes Barack says according to the Press Release:

“We have to send a clear signal that we are not going to be an occupying force, that we are not going to be maintaining permanent bases in Iraq, that we are going to initiate diplomatic efforts including with our enemies- countries like Iran.”

“I would convene a conference within my first year just gathering together Muslim leaders from all around the world, to describe for them what our values and our interests are, to insist that they need to help us to defeat the terrorist threats that are there, but to also recognize that they are bound up with us and that we have an interest in making sure that their societies can prosper and that we’re moving forward with them as partners with dignity and respect.”

You can listen to the interview Monday, December 17th on Sirius Stars (ch 102) at 5am, 7am, 12pm, 2pm, and 11pm (all times ET).

Earlier this morning, Sirius and XM issued a joint press release that included quotes from various people including Cal Ripken, Jr., Wynton Marsalis, House Reps Connie Mack and Joe Baca, among others. It appears that they are trying to counter yesterday’s letter from Reps Conyers and Chabot that states they feel the merger was approved without full support at the Department of Justice.

Read the full Press Release here

Yesterday SIRI and XMSR had big drops around 3pm when reps John Conyers(D) and Steve Chabot(R) sent a letter to Attorney General Michael Mukasey not to rush approval of the merger. They feared that the assistant Attorney General might sign off on the deal even if there were objections from department staff. It appeared the congressmen, both friends with the NAB, were trying to stall the merger and hopefully get more politicos involved.

According to an AP article today, Stifel, Nicolaus & Co. analyst Blair Levin believes that the merger will be a close call but will get the green light anyway. Either way, the letter will not hold any weight with the Department of Justice, says Levin.

Keep up with the latest merger talks in our Merger Mania forum.

Morgan Stanley, who has been unable to comment on SIRI/XMSR recently as they have been helping the companies with the merger, has finally been allowed to give some guidance, although no price targets or profit estimates.

They believe that a non-merged Sirius will have a larger proportion of OEM to retail than predicted, but they will not be FCF+(Free Cash Flow Positive - more cash is coming in than going out minus capital expenditures - satellites and such) until 2010. That assumes there will be a $2 rate increase next year. Without that, FCF+ will not be reached until 2012-2013.

Morgan Stanley also believes that a merger has the potential to help lower the high Subscriber Acquisition Costs, although the first dual-service radios will likely be expensive to produce. They also think that having an a la carte programming package will help to drive subscribers.

The situation at XM is a little more dire. They are pushing back FCF+ until late 2011 at the earliest, and believe there will be only 1.33 million net subscriber adds in 2008, down almost a quarter of a million from before.

Report provided by Seeking Alpha

Sirius Backstage is now 30,000 members strong this morning, after our newest member fryguy joined. A big thanks to everyone, and if you haven’t registered yet, you can do so quick and free here.

According to a report on 24/7 Wall St, SIRI short selling has increased by 14.4 million shares in the second half of November, and stands at 113.5 million shares as of 11/30, now standing as the third highest short interest on the NASDAQ, and eighth overall. XM’s short interest is up 9%, and stands at 21.9 million shares.

The increase is likely due to the pending merger. More people feel confident that the merger will not be approved, and hope that will drive the stock price down dramatically.

For those who don’t know what short-selling is, it is when you sell a stock without owning any shares, hoping it will go down. You then buy the stock back, hopefully at a lower value. It is basically ’sell high, buy low’.

So did you short SIRI or XMSR, or do you own some shares, thinking the merger will be approved?

ESPN and Sirius have announced that there will be new exclusive programming coming to Sirius. First, a new weekly radio show called ESPN the Magazine debuted yesterday from noon-2p, and will air weekly at that time on ESPNEWS channel 121. It is hosted by Gary Hoenig, general manager and editor-in-chief of ESPN Publishing, and ESPN The Magazine Editor Gary Belsky, and will feature a roundtable discussion of the week’s events with commentary by ESPN the Magazine writers and editors, as well as the occasional high profile guest.

Shows will include their flagship SportsCenter (6 p.m., 11 p.m. M-F), as well as Around the Horn (5-5:30 p.m. M-F); College GameDay (10 a.m.-noon Saturdays during the football season); Outside the Lines (9 a.m. Sundays); Sports Reporters (9:30 a.m. Sundays), NASCAR Now (6 p.m. M-F), as well as the famous Pardon The Interruption (5:30-6 p.m. M-F), featuring Tony Kornheiser and Michael Wilbon.

All shows will air on ESPNEWS, channel 121. ESPNRadio will remain the same as before.

Larry Flick from Sirius OutQ has reportedly given inaccurate information on Madonna’s new album. On Thursday, he made news around the world when he announced that the title would be Licorice, and would be released in Late April. According to the UK’s Channel 4, Madonna has denied that the album would be called Licorice, and said that the release date was wrong.

Liz Rosenberg, a spokesman for Madonna’s label Warner Records, said “Sirius does not know what they are talking about.”

BTW: That’s the best I can do for punny headlines. Hopefully it is a one-time deal

According to a media release this morning, Bubba the Love Sponge (r), the second most popular Sirius personality after Howard has had his contract renewed, albeit not known for how long. Bubba announced he was coming to Sirius in 2005, so if he had a two year contract previously, there is a good chance that his contract was renewed for another two years. Hear Bubba weekday afternoons on Howard101.

Tampabay.com is also reporting that he has inked a deal with terrestrial radio company Cox, to have a morning show in Jacksonville and Tampa(thanks BMF!). The two shows together are worth about $3 million to Bubba’s production company. This will be Bubba’s first time on the air on FM in 4 years. The show will air on a 10-second delay, and any pre-taped skits need to be approved by executives, as well as have the execs informed of any controversial bits ahead of time.

The question that arises is, can Bubba do 8 hours per day of talking and still be funny? Or will this be too much for him, and allow the show to implode? You’ll just have to tune in to find out.