Karmazin Tones Down Language on Sirius Takeover

By BEN SISARIO

Is the boardroom drama at Sirius XM Radio cooling down?

In the most recent episode, John C. Malone, the chief executive of Liberty Media, had harsh words for Sirius's chief executive, Mel Karmazin, at the annual media and technology conference in Sun Valley, Idaho.

“I would prefer not to lose Mel, but he's gone public and said he won't work for me so what am I supposed to do?” Mr. Malone said. Liberty is in the midst of a takeover of Sirius, and late last year Mr. Karmazin told Reuters that he is “not really good at working for somebody” and “just could not be a No. 2.”

In Sirius's quarterly earnings conference call on Tuesday, Mr. Karmazin toned down his words, signaling that he would cooperate with Mr. Malone.

“I can assure you that the board and I are interested in accomplishing whatever Liberty wants to do, as long as it's in the best interests of all shareholders.”< /span>

“I'm a big believer in free speech, and I don't question anyone's ability to write things,” Mr. Karmazin said, as reported by Forbes on Tuesday. “But the fact that I was asked a question two years ago about working for somebody, and I told them that my experience at Viacom was such that I didn't enjoy [it], and I like working for a board as opposed to working for a controlling shareholder - that was something I said. And every time the discussion of Liberty comes up, somebody is coupling my name into that.”

The interview with Reuters was published in November.

• On Tuesday, Sirius reported $838 million in revenue for the second quarter, up 12.5 percent from the same period last year. The company's net income was $3.1 billion, but almost all of that - just less than $3 billion - came from an income tax benefit. Sirius's subscriber rolls have risen to a high of 22.9 million; 4.2 million of those are paid for by car dealers as sales promotion s.
• Also on Tuesday, the company announced “Sirius XM On Demand,” a feature that the company has been talking about for more than a year, which allows its subscribers to listen to old shows from a catalog of 2,000 hours of content from more than 200 shows.

Ben Sisario writes about the music industry. Follow @sisario on Twitter.