Imus

[Howard Glazer]

On the possibility of Imus going satellite, why not? At the Consumer
Electronics Show this past week, XM announced the acquisition of rights
to two talk hosts who are (a) no strangers to controversy and (b) on the
downside of their careers in syndication: G. Gordon Liddy and "Dr."
Laura Schlesinger. 

I believe both of them will remain in syndication on what we XMers refer
to as "terrestrial radio" as well, but that's not the case for the third
"name" introduced by XM: Tony Kornheiser, late of ESPN Radio and
currently of ESPN TV's "Pardon the Interruption." He's been on
Washington's WTEM for the past few months, but his non-compete clause
with ESPN prohibited his syndication. Loophole found! WTEM will now just
feed his show to XM for national distribution.

WTEM is a Clear Channel station, but CC may or may not still own a piece
of XM. Reports in one of the XM fan sites maintain that CC revealed in
its last SEC filing that it had sold off its entire stake in XM. I
haven't seen any corroboration of this in the media and haven't checked
the SEC's site myself. Anyway, even if CC truly has no horse in the
satellite race anymore, they are still pretty buddy-buddy with XM.

Howard