According to the contract, Howard Stern could create three individual channels of which he opened two so far. In fact Howard 100 and Howard 101 are on top of the listeners’ preferences from the entire package offered by the broadcaster. The range of programs available with Sirius satellite radio is absolutely incredible and each of the categories sports, entertainment, music and news/talk are divided in their turn in further subcategories. Thus, for the music category you can choose from pop, jazz, country, R&B, pop and rock channels. To illustrate this variety even further, it suffices to say that just for rock, you’ve got more than twenty-two available choices.

The programs on Sirius satellite radio are self productions, and many of the live shows are hosted by big names in various domains, such as notable sports figures in skateboarding, NBA, cycling and football of course. There are musicians, deejays and veejays as well as hip hop superstars like 50 Cent or Eminem who support the music and entertainment part of the programs, while political commentators deal with the news and major events in talk shows and bulletins.

In the market approach, Satellite radio depends on a strategy of exclusiveness and this is best shown in the access to major sports events. Sirius satellite radio is the only broadcaster for all the CFL, NBA and NFL games. In fact, since 2005, Sirius is the satellite radio company with the most live NBA games. Other worth mentioning achievements include the national horse racing talk show At the Races, as well as to the English Premier League matches that deserve all the attention; moreover, soccer topics are debated daily from Monday to Friday in various talk shows.

Ham radio probably gets back to the 19th century or the beginning of the 20th when ninety amateur stations serviced Canada and the United States. The appearance of ham radio has very much to do with hobby practices and experiments, and very often the contribution made to science and public services has been preponderant. Moreover, plenty of emergency cases had a happy end because of the intervention of ham radio operators.

Ham radio covers several types of transmissions and besides the quality FM (frequency modulation) that we are all familiar with, ham radio operators also work on single sideband with a higher transmission reliability or on the Morse code even if technology has come a long way since the days of the radio-telegraph. Presently, computers have changed the evolution of ham radio for ever, with the introduction of the digital modes and the development of the packet radio. Last but not least, ham radio operators manage to use the low power communications on shortwave bands to stay in real-time mode.

Ham radio through satellite signal is no longer out of reach with the existence of the orbiting satellites carrying amateur radio (OSCAR); all one needs is a basic hand-held transceiver to make the broadcast possible. Another interesting aspect is that ham radio operators use the moon and the aurora borealis to get a good reflection of the radio waves. Some ham radio stations have even got into contact with the International Space Station as the astronauts on board are also licensed as amateur radio operators. Discussions are in fact common practice among the individual hams who get on-air just to join one meeting or another.