Stern Words From CBS

That performance apparently drew CBS' ire. CBS claims that Stern's rich stock bonus tied to the subscriber gains amounted to fraud: "The complaint alleges that the Sirius-Stern contract provided that Stern was to receive this stock payment in 2010, but it had an acceleration provision that allowed Stern to receive the compensation as early as January 2006 if these subscriber targets were met. All of Stern's actions for which he received this expedited compensation occurred during the time that Stern was under exclusive contract with CBS Radio, when the Sirius payment terms to Stern were kept secret."

When CBS and Viacom(VIA) split at the beginning of the year, many investors expected that Viacom would rocket into the new-age stratosphere while stodgy old CBS, with its radio business and outdoor billboards, would stagnate and pay investors chunky dividends.

In some ways the opposite has happened, thanks largely to the hard-charging Moonves, who refuses to allow his traditional media company to go the way of old media dinosaurs. Instead, Moonves had been quick to broker a bunch of deals that put his content on wireless devices and make them available for download online. He has wrapped up a deal to buy college sports network CSTV and notably fathered a new network, the CW, that will blend highly rated programs from his fledgling UPN enterprise with that of Time Warner's(TWX) WB. Moonves, as he himself notes frequently, intends to get paid for his content.

Late Tuesday, Sirius slipped 9 cents to $5.02.

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