Plain Old Radio Service
This article has been widely circulated ... basically commercial radio isn't growing (at least ad revenues - real listened minutes are shrinking in many segments).
The profit margins are still remarkable - something like 45% of revenus. The executives at Viacom probably feel this sort of margin has been established by god. It is very similar to the chats we had with the record majors in the late 90s .. sky high margins and that was justified by the "value" provided to the customers.
I'm sure much of satellite radio's allure is related to programming. Most of commercial radio is a wasteland and the big conglomerates, out of greed and a misunderstanding of their consumers, merely cloned stations to cut costs.
Most of the players must be tooling podcasting strategies - even if it means discounting the possibility of a service. Barriers to entry and transmission costs are small compared to satellite or fm radio, so there should be real choice for consumers. I'm betting the early winning players will be satellite radio (it would be easy for them to offer podcasts of their shows on the net) and NPR. Apple probably has some interesting ideas, but I can't imagine direct programming from them - one can imagine updates to iTunes to make this very easy - it will be a way for them to extend their lock on the market (aacplus seems make for the purpose with regular aac for higher quality when necessary). The big commercial radio networks are probably in denial - they probably can't figure out how to get 45% margins from the business.
Putting together interesting radio programs takes real effort and some talent. There may be some long tail effect, but the middle part of the tail is going to be much more interesting.
In the meantime, strap in for an interesting ride as Wall Street realizes PORS networks have grossly inflated valuations.