NEW YORK (AP) Talk-show host Laura Schlessinger won’t stay away from radio very long only a weekend, in fact.

Sirius XM Radio Inc. said yesterday it has a multiyear deal with Schlessinger to bring her ‘Dr. Laura’ advice programme to satellite radio in January. Specific terms were not revealed.

Schlessinger had said in August that she was quitting her syndicated radio programme, a week after she apologised for using the N-word on the air 11 times while talking to a black woman, and activists demanded her ouster.

She ends her traditional radio programme on Friday, December 31. The following Monday, her ‘Dr. Laura’ show will begin live at 3pm Bermuda time on Sirius XM. It will air for three hours a day on Monday through Friday.

Schlessinger announced on CNN’s ‘Larry King Live’ on August 17 that she was walking away from her radio show when her contract ended. The next day Sirius talk programming chief Jeremy Coleman called her to discuss a switch, she said.

“The first and most important thing that appealed to me was the freedom to speak my mind without advertisers and affiliates being attacked by activist groups that just love to censor anything they don’t agree with,” she said.

“That just about made my heart and head explode.”

The liberal watchdog Media Matters for America was a persistent critic. Its leadership didn’t accept her apology and sought to encourage advertisers to drop her show. She was reading the Media Matters website when she decided, “that’s it, I’m done with this,” Schlessinger said.

In the radio incident that prompted her to quit, Schlessinger said to the woman involved, who was married to a white man, that “if you’re that hypersensitive about colour and don’t have a sense of humour, don’t marry out of your race.”

Schlessinger said she’ll have some new segments on her show, including interviews with people about situations “that are relevant to the morals, values, principles and ethics that I nag about every day.”