Word: sterne
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...gone on a cruise [before easyCruise]," says South. "This has opened barriers for people like us." Great; just as long as nobody expects luxury at low prices. Forget deck quoits, pink gins and white-jacketed stewards. The only extra on this voyage is a small jacuzzi perched at the stern of the ship. The trip costs as little as $50 a night, but food and drink aren't included and most cabins are windowless. And they're orange. Orange is everywhere. In the furniture, fixtures and staff uniforms. In the Sports Bar, bartenders struggle to lip-read orders...
What XM lacksand what Sirius is gambling onare marquee names like Howard Stern and Martha Stewart, stars who CEO Karmazin is convinced will differentiate his brand and lure subscribers and, eventually, big ad dollars. Stern, whose history with Karmazin dates to the mid-'80s, fits in naturally with Sirius' bad-boy image. Frustrated by the feds' indecency crackdown, Stern is literally counting down the minutes (on his website) left on his contract with Infinity, his current home. He has been a relentless promoter for Sirius, trying to coax his 12 million listeners over to pay radio. He is also charging...
...Stern brings in the young dudes, it will be up to Stewart to even the scales with women. Sirius appeals to guys because men tend to be early technology adopters and because Sirius has bulked up on pro sports, offering channels for NBA, NFL and NHL games (assuming that hockey returns), and starting in 2007, stock-car racing via NASCAR, which Karmazin lured from XM. Sirius signed Stewart for a bargain $30 million over four years, plus a share of ad sales. It's paid to her company, Martha Stewart Living OmniMedia, in return for a 24-hour women...
Karmazin concedes that he didn't foresee the potential of satellite radio and raised doubts about its viability as a business model. Just a week before being named CEO of Sirius, he told a broadcasters' conference in Portugal that while Stern made a "brilliant" deal for himself, "the jury is out on whether or not it is good for anybody else." To the old guard at Sirius, Karmazin certainly seemed like a saboteur. "They thought my agenda was to hold back satellite radio," he says of talks he had with Sirius in 2003 about a link with Viacom. What changed...
...that Sirius has announced but hasn't launched. Another edge: XM's reported subscriber-acquisition costs of $62, vs. $177 for Sirius in 2004 (Sirius expects the cost to drop to less than $145 for 2005). XM chief Hugh Panero says he can't rationalize signing a star like Stern. "What we do is look at the long-term economics of the programming," he says. "We're less concerned about the p.r. bang of an announcement...