"Steve Sobol" wrote in message
...
Garrett Wollman wrote:
In article ,
Steve Sobol wrote:

I suppose if you're listening to XM and are from San Antonio, Texas, it's
"hometown" radio because that's where Clear Channel's corporate
headquarters
are. :P Or if you're in NYC and listening to Sirius.


Correction: Clear Channel no longer owns an attributable stake in XM.
They never owned as much as 25% in any case. (XM's headquarters are
in Washington, BTW.) The biggest owner of XM is Rupert Murdoch's
DIRECTV Group.

Thanks; ok, details are slightly off, but the concept is still the same.
Perhaps even more so in Murdoch's case.

Even the Hughes ownership, which started at over 20%, which transferred to
DirecTV, was sold a year ago.

DirecTV Sells XM Stake

By TSC Staff
3/26/2004 10:02 AM EST



Shares of XM Satellite Radio (XMSR:Nasdaq - news - research) slipped Friday
after longtime backer DirecTV (DTV:NYSE - news - research) sold its stake.


DirecTV raised $230 million Friday by selling the public 9 million shares in
the fast-growing Washington, D.C., satellite radio broadcaster, XM said in a
Friday morning press release. DirecTV, which until this year was a General
Motors (GM:NYSE - news - research) unit called Hughes Electronics, was an
early investor in XM and remained its largest shareholder through January,
according to Yahoo! Finance.

The investment was surely a profitable one for DirecTV, which recently came
under the control of Rupert Murdoch's News Corp. (NWS:NYSE - news -
research) . After all, XM shares posted a staggering 1,000% gain last year
as investors bought into its promise of early leadership in a fast-growing
tech niche. At the end of 2002, before the XM rally began in earnest, GM and
its affiliates held nearly 20% of the company. .