Sat radio is great from a technological standpoint. It’s the fee and radio culture that’s the problem.
It’s not comparable to the cable TV market. When pay TV services started, it provided stuff that had never been seen in the home (profanity, nudity, tiny stations way up on the UHF dial) so it was different enough so the consumer felt that there was real value.
Sat radio just doesn’t offer that same value (real or imagined). Hearing Stern use the F-bomb just isn’t valuable enough for many people.
Radio is also far more transitory. A TV show is 30 minutes or more and most people watch it in 1 shot. Radio is seen as “filler” to keep from getting bored in traffic. How many times have you kept the car radio on and stayed inside to listen to the rest of “King Biscuit Flower Hour”?
Even the commercial free aspect is puffed up to more than it really is. Most of us have tuners in our cars with 10 presets. Commercial comes on, change the channel.
So, yes, sat radio is cool, but that’s all.
They said the same thing about television when it was invented, it’ll never catch on……….I guess all you nay sayers are right satelite radio is a dud.
Can one of you kids please crank up the phonograph…..
Luxuries are the first to go.
We cancelled Sirius.
We don’t go out to eat.
We don’t drive unnecessarily.
The only “Luxury” we have is an Internet Connection, which we split with our neighbor. And thats only because we spend $15 a month on our hobby/passtime which is Online Gaming. All things considered, $48 a month for two people’s “passtime” is pretty cheap. Cheaper than Cable Television (which we also cancelled).
Good question. I never could understand why people would pay for radio to begin with, even if it is supposed to be commercial free which I found out it isn’t when driving in my friend’s car. I think a new ’spend less’ attitude is taking place in America and I think one of the first items that will be junked will be paying for radio on top of everything else people have to pay for. But hey, I’ve been wrong before and no one should underestimate the ‘entitlement’ attitude of Americans which got the US into the mess we are currently experiencing.
Radio, in the end, is local. It appeals to citizens who want to keep abreast of what is happening in their world. Having access to uninterupted (commercial free) music and commentary is one thing, but sooner or later, the listener WILL tune to a local station. That’s how it works. For people to pay ANY price to listen to music and/or Howard Stern is a little over the top! While I like Howard and am grateful he has an outlet, I do not think as a personality he is worth all that much money, at least, not enough to make Sirius radio a viable entrprise. Sorry, folks…satellite radio is going to stay a bust.
Of course Sirius will survive, Howard is NOT radio you can get anywhere else, depending on your market there are DOZENS of channels you cannnot access! I work in an office building where terrestrial radio is iffy, with Satellite, I can sit IN THE MIDDLE OF THE BUILDING and recieve EXCELLENT signal, this IS NOT available to me on old-fashion radio. I have it in the car on my home, and in the house, once I get a truly mobile device, I can walk around town with it. Considering the wealth of content, not just Howard, but Grateful Dead radio too – fantastic, unmatched, and no commercials when listening to music – a total dream. Of course the product will survive, nothing else comes close. Now, how do you market to a country that has almost completely forgotten about radio – that is the challenge!!
Service will probably survive since there is a market for it but the stock will not recover soon. Simply put, management has to go. They have proven to not be able to put together strategies and content production that will grow customer base at reasonable prices. Chapter 11 filling is a near certainty since it’ll allow them to renegotiate contracts for content, refocus their strategy, and change their image into something that will attract more subscribers than their current below-the-belt programming. Will subscribers stick around in the meantime (beside lifetime memberships)? Nobody wants to stick with a loser. Bankrupcy proceedings will hardly help attract more customers since on the surface it signals a failed business model. Potential new customers will likely read it as the service not having content worth paying for. Reputation and perception is a hard thing to overcome. Just ask US automakers on quality reputation. So for stock to recover, it’ll take a while to demonstrate that the new strategy works sufficiently well to stay in the black and offer potential for customer growth. I don’t think it’ll happen soon, if ever.
I love Sirius – last year I bought a lifetime membership. Even so, there are a few key aspects of the Sirius business model that I do not like, and that I believe are contributing to its downfall.
I never cared for Howard Stern. I always saw him as a loud, crude, pathetically self absorbed clown – viciously attacking every else in the industry in an effort to make himself look better. After listening to him over the last year I must admit there is a certain cleverness and wit about him that explains the notoriety he has achieved (but clearly a $500 million deal was ludicrous and completely irresponsible). But unfortunately his appeal is far too narrow to carry this company and his form of entertainment much beyond its present customer base.
No matter how appealing the self proclaimed “revolution” might be to the low life iconoclasts who dominate his fan base the fact is this is still a moral country in which unchecked cussing and crude sexual proclamations are not appreciated or seen as entertainment – at least not in excess.
With Howard as the poster boy for the station the general assumption from all who are not familiar with the Sirius lineup is that it is “porno radio”. Consequently the company has trouble attracting any advertisers other than The Man Groomer, ashleymadison.com, and pornoclips.com. There is a reason why traditional, respectable, big time advertisers won’t advertise on Sirius, it is because so much of their target markets choose not to subscribe. Families and many others (the majority of consumers) would rather not have f-bombs and crude, elaborate sexual discussions popping out of their radios at a sophomoric rate.
The flagship stations (100 and 101) are loaded with anything goes radio, and I fear this is putting a cap on membership growth as well as terribly muffling the creativity that got these people their fan base and reputations in the first place.
The “talent” and programming that shows up on these channels rely far too much on cussing to get a laugh. There seems to be very little effort to develop original, creative material. Now it just seems like the attitude is, “Aw, who wants to think, let’s just throw a few f-bombs around, make fun of a porn star’s lack of knowledge about state capitals and ask some b-list actor if his ex-girl friend liked it in the butt” – oh wait, wait, I know, let’s say ass, that is much funnier – BRILLIANT”!
I find Bubba the Love Sponge much more entertaining now, even though since his new contract took effect his show is just a retransmission of his morning Tampa terrestrial show. Unmonitored by censure Bubba and his staff sounded like a bunch of middle schoolers who had taken over the school’s PA system, rushing to cuss and talk sex as much as they could before the dean of boys broke down the door. Really, what percentage of the country wants to pay for radio that features on its primary station the host paying homeless people to lick other people’s balls and spraying poop spray on the losers of contests? Now they are back to having to stand by the quality of their entertainment, and I now find them more entertaining, although still terribly immature and a dead certain turn off to most of the country.
The whole Howard is King, don’t knock the King is another albatross around the neck of Sirius. It is painful to listen to the Sirius talent suck up to Howard. Having listened to Howard quite a bit it has become obvious to me his need for adulation and his apparent underlying insecurities have established at Sirius one of the most unpleasant conditions a work place can have – a constant need from the boss for reverence and praise. This comes through on his own show as well as many of the other live shows. The credibility of the staff drops tremendously when they are reduced to pandering sycophants on a regular basis. Only Artie Lange shows any regular independence and his style draws unmasked anger and jealousy from others who are not so bold (Gary?).
Ferrall is a great addition, and a perfect match for this medium, but even he too often cusses or hammers away with sexual or drug use references. Somebody like the horribly unfunny Jackie needs this sort of crutch. Scott Ferrall does not, but unfortunately the mind set at Sirius is “we say it because we can”, and this has lowered the intelligence and creativity level of the programming far too low . . . and this is what I believe will be the root cause of Sirius’ leveling off of new customer growth – and will eventually lead to the loss of my lifetime membership. Funny, when I signed up I considered it the length of my life, instead it would appear I am going to get a return on my investment for the much shorter life span of Sirius.
Sat radio is definitely the future. I’ve been a Sirius customer for 3 years now and i love it. I’ve signed up at least 5 of my family and friends. Howard Stern isn’t for everyone, but he does have a large fan base that followed him over and will gladly pay. He’s been the driving force getting new subscribers, dont know why so many hate on him. Nothing like traveling across the country on the same station with no drop in service.
Pay for radio? Can you say suckers? I still don’t get why people fell for that in the first place.
TOAST!Perfectly burnt….
Solid cash flow? Solidly negative. Neither Sirius nor XM has ever had a quarterly profit. If Sirius files Chapter 11 and Stern bolts it’ll quickly become a Chapter 7.
This should have been the equicalent of Cable TV, if they’d kept the model music music music, but these idiotic managers, namely Panero at XM, fiddlefarted into the ground over six years, overspending on “content” nobody cared about. I was in XM at $12 and out at $29 after seeing it soar to $41, a “monopoly” is now worth pennies….because both warring companies overspent for “content” outside of music NOBODY’s cared about since the days of FDR, namely overripe foul mouthed DJ’s, and sports for ungodly sums. Meanwhile AAPL, after failing and falling on it corporate butt, had SIX years to perfect the only thing anyone cared about, portable storage devices for music called IPOD’s and music music music. SIX years for OEM to gain traction as OEM car components, still playing out, but time lost to everything down to portable MP3/4 players. It was commercial free, except of course, when H STERN’s old boss came on board SIRIUS and started sneaking in the deathknell to the only advantage of satrad, commercials, into it “other” than music venues.
Talk about snatching the jaws of defeat from victory, HD radio, came next.
These folks should have been AMZN and EBAY and they blew it handing out money to idiots and executives.
Sound familiar?
First of all, I don’t buy the 20 million subscriber thing. If there really are that many, I’d like to know how many are getting the service for a free or reduced price?
I really enjoyed XM before it was taken over. When they killed Cross Country I tossed the equipment in the trash. I found a way to listen to the one talk show I was interested in via the internet, so why pay whatever their last reduced offer was to get it through them?
I loved XM radio when I first started listening to it in 2005. I listen to somewhat off-beat genres (jazz, chill, NPR talk radio, electronica, etc.), so I loved that XM had all of those stations in high quality. I also loved XM Traffic & Weather.
The problem is that they started adding more channels than their bandwidth could support, so they must’ve altered the compression scheme for some of the less popular channels, such as the ones I listened to. The result? I stopped subscribing and went back to CDs. If they continue to alienate customers, I don’t see how they can survive. Add to that that many people probably won’t renew their subscriptions in the current economic environment and it doesn’t look good for satellite radio.
Let’s see 20,000,000 customers
At $100 a year that is $2 billion dollars a year. Sirius XM owes like $3.5 billion which it is having a hard time paying. I do not understand the money here because they seem to be making enough. They should charge people like fox news or Howard Stern to broadcast with them. So where is the $2 billion a year income going? It must be pure profit if they are not making money.
Well, unlike Joe, I can’t get the station I listen to for free (unless I stream it on the computer at home). I listen to much of the Air America lineup, and that is not available in Columbus, Ohio without XM. We used to have an Air America affliliate here, but rumor has it their local sponsers received too many threats and pulled their advertising. So much for “free speech”.
Sirius buying XM is like K-Mart buying Sears. Neither proved to have competence to run one company – much less two. They won’t be around much longer in their present form. I saw this train-wreck coming.
I’ve been an XM/XM Sirus customer for over five years. They claim that music channels are music only; it’s not true. I agree with the other commetns – too much talking, no diffence between terrestrial radio, etc. Failure.
Is there anyone who seriously doesn’t think this is exactly what the government wanted. Sat radio is too free, and allows too much open discussion so of course dems and republicans did everything they could to prolong the merger and allow them to bleed cash the whole time.
People will not pay for something they can get for free? I heard the same thing said of television. The problem is satellite radio does not yet have enough diffentiation from free services. When that happens, it will be a strong competitor.
In late November my dad leased a new car and we have the Sirius/XM radio in the car as a trial and we like it. When there is nothing on a regular radio station I can turn to the Sirius/XM and listen to some of my favorite songs or listen to some enjoyable programming. Also an added benefit with satellite radio is when you are in an area where there are 3 maybe 5 stations coming through I can always count on satellite radio to keep me entertained while I am on the road. I think there are a lot of people who would be sad to see it go. 
With the poor car sales the company wont be able to make a lot of money considering the fact that every new car is equipped with Sirius/XM But with that being said you don’t have to listen to it in you’re car, you can listen to it in your home or office.
Sirius/XM radio is the wave of the future. 
I lost interest after the merger. XM was fantastic in it’s day, but Sirius ruined it. Consumer’s got less choice, shallower playlists, and awful DJ’s. Now SATRAD is nothing more than terrestrial radio without commercials. Sad really.
With my bluetooth phone stuck in one ear, my IPOD in the other and my eyes glued to the GPS unit sqawking at me from the dash – who cares.
I remember the initial business plan of both companies to turn black ink after 5 years, wasn’t that like 15 years ago?!
Personally I hope they do close up shop and have to splash birds, the service isn’t that great. The old addage holds true, you get what you pay for.
Tim,
If they go into chapter 11 all current regular stock owners will lose their shares. The company will reoganize and issue brand new shares to new investors. Souns like you invested back in 2004 or so and belived the media hype
I get a kick out of the people that say no one will pay money for radio when you can get it free. By that logic no one would pay for satellite or cable TV either. Throw an antenna on your roof and you can get TV for free. Granted the reception and programming choices might not be all that great but its free.
Sirius/XM will survive. They may be forced to change their business model to generate more revenue through advertising. Again, no different than cable or satellite TV.
At this point, I don’t care. Sirius lost us when they dropped Cross Country in favor of “Outlaw” Country.
you could see doomsday 3 years ago. xm and sirius were neck and neck trying to sign up subscribers and piling on debt by trying to have the latest “big name”. they also relied on new car radio installs for the bulk of their new customers. we all know where car sales are now. plus their service is a lot easier to let go of than, say, cable tv.
to wrap it up: great format, awesome enjoyability yet unsustainable.
RIP
Sirius XM will not survive unless it commits to offering programming that cannot be found on conventional radio. Currently they offer the same musical pablum and talk radio blowhards available for free.
No it won’t help. Poor management decisions have lead to this. Giving “names” millions of dollars was the big mistake. 500 million for Stern? Please. (BTW) I know all this money did not go to him) Yet even after he failed to pay off they kept handing out million dollar contracts like they were candy. If Stern did not bring people in; why would any of these other people? Oprah, Martha, etc.
Since Sirius and XM merged, It sucks. I loved XM. Sirius changed formats, channels,Dropped others. It destroyed the XM and lost me as a subscriber.
Sirius and XM shld split up; since the merger nothing but negatives as far as the consumer can see, and now investors as well.
Yes, I do think they’ll survive. As of March 11, 2009 the company has announced plans to charge $2.99 per subscriber per month for access to internet radio. I’m a subscriber and I’m outraged, this should be included in your monthly radio subscription costs as it always was. So, they’ll survive based on these new profits alone.
I don’t understand, if Ergen is the holder of a majority of Sirius’ debt, how bankruptcy will keep them out of Ergen’s hands. Tell me if I’m wrong, but the existing equity holders will be wiped out and Ergen will get the company anyway, right?
If satellite radio realized that 14 year old kids do not subscribe to their service, maybe they wouldn’t be going bankrupt. Its just common sense that most subscribers are in their late 20’s, 30’s, and 40’s.
Maybe if they targeted the above age groups with more stations and with more variety that they would like to hear, they would have more customers.
No, I don’t think they will survive. Why? “Well, it must be the ECONOMY,” you mights say , in fact we blame that for pretty much everything nowadays, don’t we? No, here’s a crazy thought, THE ENTIRE CONCEPT WAS FLAWED FROM THE BEGINING! People on the whole will not pay good money for radio they can get for free. Just that simple.
I’ll admit that I’m really pretty ignorant when it comes to how bankruptcies work. Here’s my question. Let’s say Sirius/XM files for Chapter 11. According to the article that means the shareholders are out of luck. The company will still exist and continue to operate. So who now owns this company if not the shareholders?
It sure was great that Congress, the DoJ, and the FCC spent 18 months protecting us from the insanely powerful monopoly SiriusXM has become when they could have been trying to prevent the economy from collapsing, or even trying to figure out who in sports is using steroids…
This company has a solid cash flow, and as soon as they can renegotiate their debt (which is what chapter 11 is all about) they will be A-Okay.
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The fact that you can drive from one end of the country to the other, and listen to the same station, should be enough to convince anyone that the technology and quality of sound of satelite radio, puts am/fm radio into the history books with Betamax and Pong.
The music stations that I listen to are 100% commercial free, Hits 1, 80’s, 90’s Pulse, Coffee House 30 etc.
If you don’t like Stern may I suggest something different
perhaps, CNN, CNN Headline News, Fox News, Cosmo Radio, Bloomberg Radio, etc etc.
Could this negative slant be from the same folks that tried to stop the merger of Sirius/XM?
Once and for all, if you don’t like Stern, don’t listen to him.
BUBBA BUEY, BUBBA BUEY