The Street.com's Michael Comeau has a good piece analyzing Sirius Satellite Radio (SIRI). He looks into whether this is a good buy for investors who've had trouble deciding whether to get into satellite radio now, soon, later -- or never. The stock's been hovering around $4 since mid-July, down from a peak around $4.75 earlier that month.

Howard Stern has been operating his show on Sirius since January, and it's probably not too soon to consider what type of deal it would take to get him to renew or extend his celebrated $500 million 5-year contract. Comeau feels that, with Sirius subscriber growth "decelerating", that a renewal might prove prohibitively expensive. Also, that deal set a "high bar" for the cost of signing new talent to the fledgling industry. Just something to consider.

And like us, Comeau wonders whether Apple (APPL) with iTunes and the iPod (or Zunes, if you prefer) could make satellite radio obsolete rather soon. Considering the flood of stories about mainstream media entities streaming content free on the net this week alone, makes that a real factor that long-term investors need to consider. How about this? Comeau asks if Stern really needs Sirius. What to prevent him, or other radio "names" from streaming their own content from their own sites?