SATELLITE RADIO’S REACH UP SLIGHTLY, STERN STILL THE KING: Arbitron ratings for the two U.S. satellite radio services for Fall 2007 show the platform reaches a combined 17.5 million people weekly (6am-12M) (XM has about 10.5 million of that cume). That’s up about a half-million over the previous Spring. The Sirius service’s 636,400 Average Quarter Hours is about 80% of XM’s 793,200 AQH. The most listened-to channels continue to be Stern’s and those that play hit music. About 1.2 million people tuned in to the “Howard 100” channel on Sirius over the course of a week, with an average “any given moment” audience of 97,600. “Howard 101” and “Sirius Hits 1” are the next most-listened to on Sirius. “XM Top 20 on 20” reaches 1,049,200 listeners a week; XM’s ’60’s, ’70’s and ’80’s channels all cume above 500,000 as well. Arbitron’s full report is here (.pdf file).

AOL RADIO CANADA TO BE POWERED BY SHOUTCAST: AOL in Canada is relaunching its online radio service as “the new AOL Radio powered by SHOUTcast.” SHOUTcast, an AOL property, is a streaming platform which features a popular directory of the more than 22,000 streams it carries (streams from popular webcasters like RadioParadise, SomaFM, SKY.fm, and AccuRadio are available on SHOUTcast, as well as streams from a large number of broadcasters from all over the world). The transition is expected to take place next week. The AOL Canada site did not indicate whether the AOL Radio channels would still be available. AOL Radio in the U.S. recently partnered with CBS Internactive to share online radio content.

CARRIERS TO WORK TOGETHER ON INTEROPERABLE MOBILE NET SERVICES: International cellular carriers Vodafone, China Mobile and Softbank have announced they’re collaborating on a “Joint Innovation Lab” to accelerate the roll-out of mobile Internet services. As a first order of business, the consortium will reportedly “develop a platform for mobile widgets, small, Web-based applications that give access to information services including weather, sport scores, traffic information, radio broadcasts and language translators,” according to an IDG story in Computerworld. A goal of the JIL, according to the report, is to release a set universal APIs (Application Programming Interfaces) to allow applications to run on different handset platforms and operating systems across different networks. One hindrance to the uptake of mobile Net services has been the lack of interoperability across carriers’ phones, especially in the U.S. This could eventually be a big step towards bringing radio and webcasting to mobile devices.

REQUEST LINES OPEN AT SLACKER RADIO: Here’s the “ADD/don’t have the time bottom line” of a blog called “Living with the Slacker Portable”: “The functionality of the Slacker Portable is phenomenal, and far outweighs the hardware and software quirks that come along with it.” Slacker is online radio that can be “cached” and listened to later without an Internet connection via the Slacker portable device. Mari Silbey, writing for ZatzNotFunny, reveals, “I’ve found that I love using the Slacker Portable when I go on a run. I thought I’d want to stick with my iPod Shuffle, but it’s much less boring to have someone/something else creating a soundtrack for me.” Meanwhile, Eliot Van Buskirk, in Wired’s Listening Post, reports that a newly-added feature allows Slacker listeners to “make requests” for specific songs to be added to their stations. It’s not “on-demand,” (you don’t hear the song instantly), but rather the song is added to the station’s “mix.”

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