Sirius Is Loved Too Much, Too Soon

This column was originally published on RealMoney on Dec. 29 at 10:45 a.m. EST. It's being republished as a bonus for TheStreet.com readers.

Last night, walking uptown on a beautiful albeit too warm December evening, I was stopped six times -- not including the one time the woman who stopped me and asked if I was Lenin's great-grandson because of the spitting image thing.

Of those six times, four of them -- four of them, mind you, which represents two-thirds, 'cause I just did that problem with my 11-year-old -- were about one stock: Sirius Satellite(SIRI).

All four were long it.

With each interchange, my enthusiasm for the stock -- already flagging with all this good news and no upward momentum -- lagged further, to the point where I just shrugged to the last fella.

I am a huge believer in learning from anyone. Anybody who stops me with a booyah on the street is going to get the interrogation about what they like, what I can do better, what I should focus on.

But four people in a row begging me to say that I liked Sirius is, frankly, a scary thing. You don't see that kind of embrace early in the game before a big move.

You tend to see it in Cisco(CSCO) at $34 or Sun Micro(SUNW) at $10 or EMC(EMC) at $18 and I pick my examples carefully.

Here's the problem. I am a huge believer in Sirius, the company. I like the management, I like the programming, I like the service. I believe it represents tremendous value over terrestrial radio and am quite willing and able to pay for a cable radio subscription if I get my money's worth -- and I get it with Sirius. I also believe that there is a gigantic, untapped market for narrow programming of the kind that Sirius is seriously developing, away from Stern. You don't need me to know how much Stern's being paid, and I genuinely believe that Mel Karmazin figured it out better than you and I can. Some people are just good business people; he's one of the best.