Beginning Nov. 15, DirecTV Inc. will offer its direct-to-home (DTH) satellite television subscribers access to XM Satellite Radio content.

DirecTV will add to its lineup 72 channels of XM Satellite Radio music and children’s programming, as well as XM’s Major League Baseball talk radio channel and its High Voltage channel, which features shock jocks Opie and Anthony. While DirecTV is promoting the link-up as a significant programming addition, the deal between may not be that big business driver for either of the two satellite entertainment providers.

“Working with XM, we are able to offer a greater number of audio channels than we were able to offer before,” DirecTV spokeswoman Jade Ekstedt told Satellite News. Currently, DirecTV offers audio channels from Music Choice. The XM deal is “a great opportunity for us to offer more programming, more variety, more breadth of choices for our customers,” she said.

The one intriguing thing mentioned by Ekstedt was that this deal “really is the beginning of DirecTV’s move into the music industry as a whole.” She declined to elaborate further but given DirecTV’s core competency as a DTH satellite television service provider, it is hard to speculate what exactly DirecTV’s play will be in the music industry.

A Subscription Driver?

While the offering of satellite radio services by either DirecTV, or its rival Echostar Communications Corp., which offers music-only channels from Sirius Satellite Radio on its Dish Network DTH satellite television service, can be a nice perk for DTH subscribers, it is hard to gauge whether this will be a subscription driver for any of the services going forward.

Based on the press release announcing the deal, XM clearly is expecting to see some additional subscriber growth from this deal.

“DirecTV offers a fantastic platform for people to experience some of the amazing content we offer on XM,” Patricia Kesling, senior vice president of marketing and operations at XM, said in the release. “We know from experience that when people sample XM, they want to become XM subscribers.”

A call to XM seeking more detailed comment the company’s expectations was not returned.

However, based on the experience from the Sirius/Echostar deal, one has to wonder whether it really is a driver or whether it could actually serve as a deterrent to subscribing to XM Satellite Radio separately.

Since Sirius and Echostar signed their deal, it has not specifically come up as a key driver in Sirius’ subscriber growth, suggesting that its impact is minimal at best.

From Echostar’s perspective, company spokesman Steve Caulk told Satellite News that Echostar is “very pleased with the partnership. … We get a lot of really good feedback from our customers about those Sirius channels. They really enjoy them.”

However, whether it is a driver for Echostar is unclear as well. “I don’t have specific numbers that would give any indication about what [the Sirius deal] is doing for our subscriber growth,” Caulk said.

Sean Butson, analyst with Legg Mason, said there is little evidence to show that the Echostar relationship with Sirius has had an impact on subscriber numbers for either company, suggesting that the XM deal with DirecTV might not be that big of a deal.

“To put it in perspective, I have not heard Sirius talk about its deal with Echostar since the deal was announced,” Butson told Satellite News. “They have never really mentioned it as a big driver of buyers of satellite radios. I don’t think it’s a really big deal.”

In fact, Butson suggested it could have the opposite effect and cause people to not buy a satellite radio service at all.

The XM/DirecTV and the Sirius/Echostar deals “may limit home satellite radio purchasing,” Butson said. “For example, someone may really like satellite radio and they were going to buy one for their family room where the television, but now they are not going to do that because it is on TV and if they have their TV hooked up to their stereo speakers anyway, what do you need to [a separate subscription for satellite radio] for?”

–Gregory Twachtman

(Jade Ekstedt, DirecTV, 310/964-3429; Steve Caulk, Echostar, 720/514-5351; Sean Butson, Legg Mason, 410/454-5917)