Stern had bonuses to grow the sirius audience if I remember correctly. Amazing considering Sirius had like 600k subscribers at the time!

Stern was at his height in 2001-2004 I think was peaking at 25m listeners in the mornings on terrestrial radio. Which was fucking massive. Dropped off huge on day 1 at Sirius and I don't think ever recovered most of his audience.

Interesting that audience size != what's a good deal for the broadcaster. Like music however I suspect the REAL value is in the 'back catalog'.