For Michael Moskowitz, satellite radio is about more than broadcasting just music and sports programs.

"It's the entertainment business, it's the wireless business and it's also the mobility business," says Moskowitz, the president and CEO of Canadian Satellite Radio Holdings Inc., which operates the Toronto-based XM Canada network. "It's a unique business model. It's a subscription business."

XM, which airs 130 channels in English and French, is also a telecom business and a satellite-radio device manufacturing company.

Some might also call it an extension of the automotive industry, on which XM is relying heavily for growth.

Brennan O'Connor, Business Edge
XM Radio Canada CEO Michael Moskowitz displays one of the company's portable radios.

Despite the auto sector's troubles, Moskowitz is banking much of his firm's growth on sales via new vehicles and a variety of other revenue streams.

As if he does not have enough to think about, he is also mindful of a merger with Sirius Radio after the U.S. versions of Sirius and XM tied the knot.

1. What are your parents' backgrounds?

"My father is a chemical engineer by trade, but didn't really do a lot of chemical engineering. He was a partner in a large consulting firm for many years, and then he moved to industry later on in his career, and now does consulting on the side and teaches business strategy at Ryerson University. My mother was a teacher. Earlier in her career, she taught children and then, English as a second language after we were born, then later spent many years in guidance counselling. Now, she does various courses for large organizations."

2. What were some of your early interests?

"I was an avid sports enthusiast. I played a lot of competitive hockey and baseball when I was a child and went to school. So I was a pretty normal kid. I always wanted to be a fireman or a policeman when I was a young kid - and a hockey player, of course. I went through undergrad to be an urban regional planner. I took a lot of politics as well, but urban regional planning really didn't suit me ... It was quite bureaucratic and much smaller than I would have liked. So I worked at various organizations, like Rubbermaid, in marketing and learned a lot there and had a real passion for business - managing businesses and marketing and sales. Then I did my MBA, because I always had a passion for general business, sales and marketing."

3. What steered you to urban planning in the first place?

"I was a practical person, so I wanted to do something that was practical in life and not just take a general degree."

4. How did you get such a strong technological bent?

"I started off pretty early on the marketing side, doing design and then setting up desktop publishing systems. (Desktop publishing) was ahead of its time, at least for a small organization. When I graduated university, I wanted to work for a national consumer electronics company that had a great passion for design. That's when I went to Sony. I learned the basics there of product management and product marketing and was dealing with some great, new, innovative products - which was fantastic. From there, I went to Sharp Electronics and then Palm Inc. So (my career) really morphed itself into technology and then, later on, into mobility products. It was a natural transition."

Michael Moskowitz

5. How did you get steered toward a career in technology?

"When I was at Sony, one of the special projects I worked on was ... kind of a personal digital assistant (PDA) with wireless capabilities. I developed some business plans around that, and we actually did a launch in Canada. Then, when I was at Sharp, I was responsible for their hand-held devices. Their mobility devices included wireless device. When I went to Palm - who weren't a traditional telecom company, but a PDA company, a very inverted business - I built one from scratch here in Canada and then later in South America. But that morphed from traditional PDAs into telecom products and wireless products."

6. What convinced you to get out of the pure PDA sector?

"I was very successful with Palm at creating the Canadian organization and then moving that into our South American organization. I'd been there for 10 years and loved it - it was a fantastic company. But I was travelling a tremendous amount and had a young family. There was a lot being missed. That was one aspect. (So) I left them, and then a gentleman, John Bitove, who owns a significant amount of XM Canada, or Canadian Satellite Radio holdings, approached me with this opportunity. We spoke at length about it for some time. It was the right match of personality and opportunity. The business needed leadership and needed to change. I loved the challenge of building things back up. It was also a Canadian company. A true Canadian company. A publicly traded Canadian company ... I was working with one of Canada's foremost entrepreneurs, as well."

7. How did John Bitove approach you?

"The search company kind of puts you together and marries you up. Then I spoke directly with John about the opportunity. He was extremely bullish about the business and excited about the business.

"He had invested in the business, obviously, and needed strong management to clean things up, but also take things to the next level - and that's what he did. That's really the short aspect to the story. But it was obviously a tough decision to make, after being with an organization for so long and being successful."

8. In layman's terms, what's the difference between an AM signal, an FM signal and a satellite radio signal, considering that both AM and FM do use satellites to transmit over long distances?

"First and foremost, the sound is digital quality. It's very high-quality digital sound. Music and talk is just crystal clear. Wherever you are, you're getting the same signal. Whether you're in Toronto or going up to Muskoka or out West, you get the same consistent signal, rather than having to switch your dial depending on what city you're in or your location."

9. With all of those commercial-free channels, how can you ensure your revenue streams?

"Well, it's a subscription business. In order to maintain your revenue streams, you have to be offering subscribers very high-valued content - something significantly higher than what Canadians are listening to today. Just based on the number of subscribers that we have, we're doing that ... It's where you take your content as well. You can stream it in your car. We have portable devices that you can take on the road and record off of them. You can stream off of your computer ... We also stream the content through mobile devices and through Rogers and Telus, and through handsets. The thing about XM is, it's really a content platform that can be pushed to multiple devices and multiple technologies."

10. Wouldn't an internet-based network be more cost effective than a satellite network that requires unique technology and a strong auto industry, among other factors, and then you've got to pay for all of that hardware?

"You need to think about where technology is born. On the satellite side, satellite delivers ubiquitous coverage throughout very large areas. Most networks do not do that. You can't get digital-quality sound. Yes, you've got Wi-Fi and Wi-Fi hotspots and you could stream XM through your (personal computer). But when you're in your car, you need this consistent flow of music or content - and satellites do that very well. There's really no replacement for that today. There are tremendous opportunities to leverage the rich content that you have through multiple devices on wireless networks - Wi-Fi and 3G. As networks pick up speed, the pipe will get bigger and we'll be able to throw additional content down the wireless networks. It will definitely evolve. When you're starting a business, you really need to provide a solution for customers. I come from the wireless business and I can tell you that packaging for a consumer experience is a very difficult thing to do. When I was working for Palm, we made hardware and software. You sold these products. You manufactured them. There was a whole (research and development) component to them and then you distributed through wireless carriers at the end, in things like the Treo.

(Research in Motion, maker of BlackBerry) does that. Apple does that, etc. But when you hand it over to a carrier, you don't have as much control. When you're developing technologies like music into your car and into your home, the right thing to do is to provide the complete solution for the consumer. Provide the content, provide the satellite network and then also provide the device that can receive that network. It was very important to create the complete solution for the customers so that they could get that experience. If you hand that off to multiple companies, it's really difficult to pull that all together ... If you own it all out of the gate, the experience for the consumer is whole, and then you can break out and expand your channels of distribution to wireless providers and other types of technologies.

11. When do you expect your company to become profitable on an annual basis?

"We don't talk publicly about that, although we do say we are cashflow positive, which is critical for our business. Our revenue was up last year by 85 per cent, so we're driving the top line. We've got over half a million subscribers in Canada and we're coming closer to the break-even point."

12. How would you describe the competition in the satellite radio business in Canada?

"Competition comes from a number of different sources. Satellite radio is really not as competitive. There are, obviously, other technologies - internet radio, (high-definition) radio. There's terrestrial radio. There's MP3. There's a number of different media options for consumers today and consumers are hungry for media and hungry for rich content. We do a great job of consolidating that and making it a great experience for each subscriber, but there is competition out there, and there has been for some time, and that's not going to change."

13. What's your view on a possible merger with Sirius?

"Well, as you know, the U.S. entities have merged in the United States. Publicly, we are evaluating those opportunities (in Canada). There are synergies between those (XM Canada and Sirius Canada); but as a publicly traded company, we need to do the right thing for our shareholders. If it makes sense for our shareholders, then we will proceed. If it doesn't, then we will continue as a separate entity."

14. Your share price has taken quite a hit. What do you see as the main factors that have affected your share price?

"We're in difficult times, right? You can't look these things in isolation. The markets are taking a tremendous hit and valued companies have come down significantly. That's not abnormal in this environment. I can't control the stock price."

15. Why do you put a heavy emphasis on selling your products and services through the auto sector at a time when that industry is struggling?

"Yes, the automotive business is in decline this year, but we're not penetrated into cars as, say, (satellite radio in) the United States. So we have opportunities in terms of penetration into more cars. Let's say we're about 45 percent penetration into cars.

We have the major import partners, who are still growing, and obviously (General Motors). We've contracted over 60 percent of all the automotive partners in Canada. That's a tremendous pipeline for us in the future. Even as the auto industry is in a slight decline, there's no question that it will bounce back. People will be buying cars. It's just a matter of when ... We're tied to the auto industry. It's a growth engine for us."

16. What do you see as your company's main challenges?

"We're obviously in a softening economy. Consumer appetite is at risk. There's no question about it. The challenge for the company is that we have a high-cost structure. Therefore, we're maniacally focused on our cost structure. We're ensuring that we lower that threshold against profitability quicker ... If you (lower costs and increase subscribers), then you squeeze the middle and you become profitable quicker. Those (challenges) are also opportunities. Once you become profitable, it's like gravy - but you've got to get there."

17. What do you listen to?

"On the music side, I listen to '80s and '90s, I listen to Top 20, I listen to Pop 2K (a Sirius channel) and Caliente, which is a Latin channel, and I listen to sports. I listen to Home Ice a lot.

"We have exclusive (satellite radio) rights to the (National Hockey League) as well, so we get all the hockey games on there. And, I listen to Laugh Attack, which is a Canadian comedy channel.

18. What are your requirements with the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC) when it comes to airing foreign programs?

"For every nine channels that we bring in from the U.S., we have to deliver one here. Hence, we have 130 channels. Thirteen of those channels are produced here in Canada. But there's no limitation in terms of us bringing foreign channels into Canada outside of our Canadian-content regulations and requirements that we abide with very closely."

19. How does dealing with the CRTC on satellite radio compare to dealing with it on regular radio?

"I don't run a traditional radio station, but there's a specific licence for satellite radio. We abide with all those rules and regulations. In terms of Canadian content, there are specifics around what we need to produce and how we do it ... We actually take a percentage of our revenue and we siphon that back to Canadian content and Canadian development and Canadian artists."

20. What will you be doing when you're not running XM Canada anymore?

"I love the challenge of running businesses and fixing businesses and driving growth. As long as there are opportunities like that, I'll be doing something unique and different."

Michael Moskowitz

* Title: President and CEO, Canadian Satellite Radio Holdings Inc.

* Born/raised/age: Toronto, 38.

* Education: Moskowitz has an honours degree in urban regional planning from York University in Toronto and an MBA from Dalhousie in Halifax.

* Family: Married, two children; daughter, 9, and son, 5.

* Career: While attending York, Moskowitz worked for Rubbermaid in desktop publishing. After graduating from York, before starting his MBA, he worked in marketing for Apple Computers. After completing his MBA, he worked in new-product development for Sony Canada and Sharp Electronics. He then headed the Canadian division of Palm Computing, which later became Palm Inc., and later headed both the Canadian and South American divisions. In 2007, he joined Canadian Satellite Radio Inc., which operates XM Satellite Radio in Canada.

* Moonlighting: Moskowitz coaches minor hockey. He has assisted a variety of charities, including the Baycrest Foundation, which provides the funding for the University of Toronto-based Baycrest Geriatric Health Care System.

* Awards: Moskowitz was named one of Canada's Top 40 Under 40 in 2004.

* Passions: His kids, hockey, building companies.

Canadian Satellite Radio Holdings Inc

* Brass: John Bitove, executive chairman; Michael Moskowitz, president and CEO; Michael Washinushi, chief financial officer; Janet Gillespie, vice-president of marketing.

* Profile: Canadian Satellite Radio Holdings Inc. operates as the XM Canada satellite radio network through its wholly owned subsidiary, Canadian Satellite Radio Inc. CSR provides satellite radio services through a six-year federal broadcasting licence granted in 2005. XM Canada broadcasts 130 channels in both English and French.XM broadcasts from studios at its Toronto headquarters and others in Montreal and Quebec City. XM Canada airs U.S. programming through a deal with Sirius XM, which owns a minority stake in XM Canada. Toronto entrepreneur John Bitove is the firm's majority owner.

* Stats: CSR (TSX:XSR) has approximately 500,000 subscribers and 90 employees across Canada.

* Website: www.xmradio.ca * HQ: 590 King St. West, Suite 300 Toronto, M5V 1M3 * Phone: 416-408-6000