Sirius' partners, Ford Motor and DaimlerChrysler, will also offer vehicles equipped with comparable radios early in 2003. By 2004, car radios will be available that will receive either company's signal.
The primary audience is commuters and truckers. The companies hope consumers will be won over by programming unlike that of commercial radio. At XM, that will include live concerts. At Sirius, music channels will include interviews with artists, recordings of live performances, and air play beyond top-selling records.
"I knew what I didn't want," said David Margolese, the founder and chief executive of Sirius. He vows to keep the music channels free of commercials, and he also rebuffed investments from traditional radio broadcasters.
XM will permit commercials on only about half of its 71 music channels. "We feel there are channels that lend themselves to a commercial-free environment, like jazz and classical," said XM's chief executive, Hugh Panero.
Nine XM channels are to be programmed by Clear Channel Communications Inc, the US' No. 1 owner of radio stations and the leading concert promoter, an XM investor.
The musical architects behind each company arrived at the same spot from different paths.
XM's programming chief, Lee Abrams, 48, a former programming consultant, has reshaped the formats of 200 stations and his work was widely copied and envied in the industry.
"We have to reinvent radio," he said. Part of his formula for drawing fans is to hire leading figures as hosts, including Bill Mack, a late-night host well-known among truckers, and Wynton Marsalis, the jazz trumpeter.
Joseph Capobianco, 52, the programming chief at Sirius, also endured the nomadic career of a radio consultant. In 1991, though, he shaped programming at another start-up, Music Choice, which now provides music channels to 19 million cable television customers.
The biggest loser may be traditional radio, said Robert Unmacht, an independent media analyst. Growth will come up short of expectations if XM and Sirius together win a 10 percent market share. "It's too much to lose," Unmacht said. "Wall Street will cream them."
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