In the high-stakes battle for the nation's burgeoning satellite-radio audience, luring the biggest name in television is akin to winning the Super Bowl.
That's the message Oprah Winfrey and XM Satellite Radio were sending yesterday, when they announced that she had signed a three-year, $55 million agreement to launch a new channel on XM called Oprah & Friends.
The centerpiece of the 24-hour channel, to begin airing in September, will be a taped, weekly half-hour show with Winfrey and her longtime friend, Gayle King, the editor of Winfrey's monthly magazine, as hosts. The rest of the programming will consist primarily of shows involving members of Winfrey's usual coterie of guests and advisers, including Bob Greene, Marianne Williamson, Robin Smith and Nate Berkus.
"It's going to be a huge hit," Winfrey predicted yesterday during a conference call with reporters. "If I wasn't me, I would tune in to hear that."
Winfrey's deal with XM is smaller by far than Howard Stern's five-year, $500 million-plus signing by XM's rival, Sirius.
Winfrey's agreement is also emblematic of the scramble for big names by both satellite radio services as they court new, paying customers.
XM had already signed up Bob Dylan, Snoop Dogg, Tom Petty, Quincy Jones and Ellen DeGeneres, while the Sirius roster includes Martha Stewart, Lance Armstrong, Jimmy Buffett, Steven Van Zandt and Eminem.
Sirius, with about 3 million subscribers, also inked a seven-year, $300 million deal to broadcast National Football League games. Not to be outdone, XM - with about twice the number of subscribers - signed an 11-year, $650 million deal to air Major League Baseball's regular season and playoff games.
"The strategy is to provide variety, and big names punctuate that," said Michael Harrison, publisher of Talkers magazine, a trade publication focused on talk radio and television shows.
Both XM and Sirius were courting Winfrey, according to Tom Taylor, editor-in-chief of Inside Radio, which tracks the industry.
"She's a superstar, and she brings attention wherever she goes, whether it's a department store that's closed or an author who's misled her," Taylor said.
He was referring, first, to an incident last summer when Winfrey became furious after being denied entry to an upscale Paris store, and, second, to her recent public drubbing of James Frey, author of A Million Little Pieces, who had belatedly acknowledged lying in the memoir that Winfrey had endorsed and had helped to make a best-seller.
