Hugh Panero, president and CEO of XM Satellite Radio [Nasdaq: XMSR], has been selected as Via Satellite‘s “Satellite Executive of the Year” by the editors and analysts at PBI Media. Panero will receive the award during the SATELLITE 2003 conference in Washington, D.C., Feb. 26-28.

XM took aim at traditional radio by offering via satellite niche music formats and genres through 100 channels of nationwide, digital quality programming. XM began commercial service in late 2001 and had amassed close to 360,000 subscribers by the end of 2002. It also recently raised $475 million in new funding.

The award had gone to European-based satellite executives SES Global‘s Romain Bausch and Eutelsat‘s Giuliano Berretta the two previous years.