Sirius Bests XM in Subscriber Adds

For the past three quarters, Sirius has been making serious inroads into XM's lead in satellite radio, and this quarter was no exception. On Wednesday, both companies announced their quarterly subscriber adds, and the smaller company continued to beat its larger rival by a 2-to-1 margin.

It still appears that ten months after shock jock Howard Stern joined Sirius, the company continues to see a residual benefit from the high-profile personality. However, XM has shot back with talk show queen Oprah Winfrey, but her channel debuted late in the quarter.

It is unclear whether Winfrey will be enough to buoy the struggling satellite radio leader, although her Book Club has been known to turn virtual unknowns into overnight sensations. Some analysts have said that XM's problems have more to do with its FCC difficulties rather than programming issues.

For the quarter, the larger satellite radio company added more than 285,000 net new subscribers to end the quarter with nearly 7.2 million subscribers. However, Sirius is no longer very far behind with 5.1 million subscribers after adding 441,101 new customers.

The numbers mean that Sirius garnered 61 percent of new satellite radio subscribers, and has more than doubled its size in less than a year. Meanwhile, XM's rather poor showing indicates that its problems surrounding its radios may be severely impacting its performance.

Neither company had any further comment ahead of their respective quarterly earnings reports.