Howard Stern

By now, everyone has heard about CBS's lawsuit against Howard Stern. One of CBS's contention was that Howard and Sirius had a secret agreement whereby Stern received additional compensation for brining in a certain amount of new subscribers attributed to Stern.

Howard contends that the Sirius shares he recieved in January was an accelerated payment. And that there was no secret agreement. On both counts he is correct. And Sirius' SEC filings prove him right.

This January 5, 2006 filing states:

We have directed The Bank of New York, the transfer agent for our common stock, to issue on January 9, 2006 an aggregate of 34,375,000 shares of common stock for the benefit of Howard Stern and Don Buchwald, his agent. Pursuant to our October 2004 agreement with Stern, we agreed to deliver these share in December 2010, or earlier if as of the end of any fiscal year we exceeded agreed upon subscriber targets. Our December 31, 2005 subscriber total exceeded the subscriber target we agreed upon with Stern in October 2004.

And this October 12, 2004 filing states:

We are also obligated to make substantial stock-based incentive payments under the agreement if we significantly exceed agreed upon year-end subscriber targets during the term of the agreement, or acquire material amounts of subscribers during the term directly and trackably through Howard Stern's efforts. In addition, upon reaching an agreed upon number of subscribers, we will share a portion of the revenue we derive directly from advertising on the Howard Stern channels, and the revenue we derive from subscribers acquired during the term directly and trackably through Howard Stern's efforts.

Note the 2004 date. SEC filings are public record, and thus hardly a secret.

Tags: HowardStern, lawsuit, CBS