Well done, Sirius XM Radio (Nasdaq: SIRI).

The satellite radio giant turned the corner -- in many different ways -- with this morning's third-quarter report. Since I lined up three questions for Sirius XMyesterday, it's only fair to come back with the mostly positive answers.

1. Where are the subs?
After back-to-back quarters of net subscriber defections to kick off the year, Sirius XM got back on track. Sirius XM more than offset 1.5 million in cancellations with 1.6 million gross additions during the quarter. Sirius XM closed out the period with 18,515,730 subscribers, or 102,295 more than it had three months earlier.

Two months ago, I opened up the floor for predictions on the media company's account tally. I promised to crown a victor among the dozens of forecasts, and it certainly wasn't me.

I was expecting a net decline of 80,000 subs, well short of the 404,411 and 185,999 listeners Sirius XM lost during the first and second quarters respectively. Despite the auto industry's "cash for clunkers" injection ramping up auto production lines again, I figured that even more cancellations would pour in after recent rate hikes and the introduction of a new music royalty fee.

I was wrong, so who was right?

Satwaves.com's David "Newman" Phillips won the horseshoe match. His stab at 18,510,000 million was off by a mere 5,730 listeners.

Phillips made his post earlier this week, so I should probably also hand out an honorary winner submitted closer to the time the article was actually published. Phillips nailed it -- no doubt about it -- but he also had the luxury of getting a clearer view of the economy in September and the robust carmaker revival that was hammered home with Ford 's (NYSE: F) blowout performance.

The closest of the predictions around the time the article was originally written in September was dcsilver, off by less than 20,000 bopping heads with his 18,535,500 target.

The most impressive part of the metric is that self-pay subs grew both sequentially and year-over-year. Sirius XM may have had more overall subscribers a year ago, but there are slightly more today that are actually paying beyond the free trial. To this end, churn and conversion rates may have weakened over last year but they are clear improvements to where Sirius XM was earlier this year.

You sucker-punched me, Sirius XM, but I kinda like the taste of blood going down my throat. Nice shot!

2. How is the bottom line holding up?
My September stab was closer on the income statement.

"Rate hikes and cost savings should deliver better top- and bottom-line results than analysts expect," I wrote at the time. "Wall Street expects Sirius XM to post a loss of $0.02 a share on a 1% year-over-year decline in revenue. I believe that Sirius XM will manage to marginally grow revenue."

Pro forma revenue grew 3% to $629.6 million, as new fees and upgrades to "best of" and streaming packages helped boost the average revenue per user. There are slightly fewer subs, but they're paying a little more.

When you grease the income statement with a refreshing 19% slide in cash operating expenses, a decent top line is transformed into an inspiring bottom line. If it wasn't for charges related to Sirius XM restructuring its debt at lower interest rates -- a good thing, obviously -- the radio star would have actually posted breakeven results. It's on that basis in which Sirius XM smoked the pros basking in their targeted deficits. Continued...