Bob Dylan: On air

Washington, Dec. 14: Bob Dylan ? singer, songwriter, former counterculture figure and voice of a generation ? has added another line to his resum?: radio DJ.

The enigmatic troubadour has signed on to host a weekly show on XM Satellite Radio, the D.C.-based pay-radio provider. Dylan will select the music, offer commentary, interview guests and answer e-mail from listeners during the one-hour programme, which will start in March, XM said yesterday.

Dylan’s hiring is not just a coup for XM, which is in a fierce battle for new subscribers with Sirius Satellite Radio, but also another score for satellite radio over conventional broadcasting.

XM and Sirius have been wooing big names and making high-priced sports deals to differentiate their offerings from terrestrial radio, and from each other.

Sirius is counting on shock jock Howard Stern, who will move to the service on January 9, to help it close the subscriber gap with XM, which boasts more than 5 million customers to Sirius’s 2 million.

XM’s chief programmer, Lee Abrams, said his company talked with Dylan’s management for about two years about the Grammy-winning artist becoming a host.

XM declined to say what Dylan would be paid for the multi-year agreement. Howard Stern signed a $500 million, five-year contract with Sirius.

Abrams said Dylan was attracted by the promise of a national audience, a commercial-free programme and “total creative freedom” to air whatever he likes. Dylan also will broadcast from wherever he wants. “This will be a peek inside the mind of one of the most important songwriters and poets of the 20th century,” Abrams said. “He’s a mystery to most people.”

Once an almost reclusive figure, Dylan, 64, lately has attained about as much exposure as an Olsen twin. This year he gave his first TV interview in 19 years on 60 Minutes, and was the subject of a Martin Scorsese-directed documentary series on PBS in September. His memoir Chronicles, Vol. 1 spent 19 weeks on the New York Times best-seller list last year.

He also appeared in, and provided the musical soundtrack for, a Victoria’s Secret TV commercial last year. The women’s undergarment chain, in turn, sold one of his promotional CDs, Lovesick, in its stores.

For Dylan, the XM deal might represent a way to reach younger music fans and stay “relevant” with those who have followed him for decades, said Tom Taylor, editor of the industry newsletter Inside Radio.

“Great artists want to stay in front of their fans and want to be discovered by new generations,” he said. “They don’t need the money or the other things, but they do want to... stay current.”

Dylan, who performs as many as 100 dates a year, is easily the biggest musical name to host his own radio programme. Steve Van Zandt, of Bruce Springsteen’s E Street Band, hosts a weekly two-hour show, Little Steven’s Underground Garage, that’s syndicated to stations across the country.

XM has previously signed programming deals with Tom Petty, Snoop Dogg and Quincy Jones.

Taylor said Dylan has a loyal following but has “never been a huge seller. He’s a tastemaker, someone other artists watch.”