Sirius Satellite Radio

Sirius Satellite Radio is a satellite radio (SDARS) service operating in North America, owned by Sirius XM Holdings.

Headquartered in New York City, with smaller studios in Los Angeles and Memphis, Sirius was officially launched on July 1, 2002, and currently provides 69 streams (channels) of music and 65 streams of sports, news and entertainment to listeners. Music streams on Sirius carry a wide variety of genres, broadcasting 24 hours daily, commercial-free, and uncensored. A subset of Sirius music channels is included as part of the Dish Network satellite television service. Sirius channels are identified by Nielsen Audio with the label "SR" (e.g. "SR120", "SR9", "SR17").

Its business model is to provide pay-for-service radio, analogous to the business model for premium cable television. Music channels are presented without commercials while talk channels, such as Howard Stern's Howard 100 and Howard 101 and Opie Radio do have regular commercials. Furthermore, all channels are free from FCC content regulation, thus songs are played unedited for language, and talk programs may feature explicit content if they wish. Subscriptions are prepaid and range in price from US$14.99 monthly (US$9.99 for each additional receiver) to US$699.99 for lifetime (of the receiver equipment) subscription. There is a US$15 activation fee for every radio activated. Sirius announced it had achieved its first positive cash flow quarter for the period ending December 2006.

Astra 5A

Astra 5A was one of the Astra communications satellites owned and operated by SES at the Astra 31.5°E orbital slot. Launched in 1997 to the 5°E position by NSAB (later SES Sirius, and now a non-autonomous part of SES) as Sirius 2, operation of the satellite was transferred to SES in April 2008 and the craft renamed and moved to 31.5°E to open up a new orbital position for the company for the development of markets in Eastern Europe and the Middle East.

Astra 5A failed in orbit in 2009.

Market

The Astra 5A satellite provided two broadcast beams, of horizontal and vertical polarisation, across two footprints, called the CEE (Central and Eastern European) beam and the PE (pan-European) beam. The CEE beam provides reception on a 60 cm dish from Poland to northern Turkey, and the Balkans to the Black Sea, while the PE beam extends 60 cm coverage from Tunisia to the Urals and from the Baltic states to Israel.

Countries covered include Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Bosnia, Bulgaria, Czech Republic, Georgia, Hungary, Iran, Jordan, Macedonia, Moldova, Poland, Romania, Russia, Serbia, Slovakia, Tunisia, Turkey, and Ukraine.