Sirius Satellite Radio announced Dec. 4 that it was updating its year-end 2006 subscriber guidance in light of lagging holiday retail sales.

"While strong, this year’s retail sales results since the Thanksgiving weekend have not been at the pace we had anticipated," Sirius CEO Mel Karmazin said in a statement. "We are updating our year-end 2006 subscriber guidance to between 5.9 million and 6.1 million. At the lower end of our range we will still add almost 20 percent more subscribers in 2006 than we did in 2005."

Holiday sales in 2005 were juiced by the impending debut of Howard Stern on Sirius. The 2006 guidance range represents total net subscriber additions of approximately 2.6 million to 2.8 million, Sirius said.