Martha Stewart, Sirius ink deal

updated 2:19 p.m. ET April 18, 2005

NEW YORK - Six weeks after being released from federal prison, Martha Stewart has reached a deal with Sirius Satellite Radio Inc. to create a 24-hour channel featuring cooking, gardening and entertaining programming for women.

Coming after separate deals to create a version of “The Apprentice” and a daily cooking show, the four-year agreement announced Monday with Sirius marks Stewart’s latest move to rebuild her business after serving time for lying to the government about a stock sale.

For Sirius, the deal with Stewart is the most recent effort to ramp up its programming to compete with its much larger rival in the emerging satellite radio business, XM Satellite Radio Holdings Inc. Earlier this month, XM reported that it had 3.8 million subscribers, while Sirius’ most recent subscriber count was 1.2 million.

“I’m very excited about this,” Stewart said, smiling broadly during a news conference. “Of all the things that I have done in the last few years with Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia, radio is actually one of the most enjoyable.”

Both Sirius and XM are still suffering deep financial losses and are spending aggressively to lure customers to their services, which cost $12.95 a month and require the purchase of special receiver units, which can only receive either Sirius or XM signals. Both Sirius and XM offer dozens of commercial-free music channels as well as numerous talk channels, many of which carry advertising.

Stewart’s channel will also carry advertising. The companies declined to provide other financial details.

The companies did say that Stewart herself would also appear on the radio channel, which was expected to be called Martha Stewart Living Radio.

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