• Get involved.
    We want your input!
    Apply for Membership and join the conversations about everything related to broadcasting.

    After we receive your registration, a moderator will review it. After your registration is approved, you will be permitted to post.
    If you use a disposable or false email address, your registration will be rejected.

    After your membership is approved, please take a minute to tell us a little bit about yourself.
    https://www.radiodiscussions.com/forums/introduce-yourself.1088/

    Thanks in advance and have fun!
    RadioDiscussions Administrators

A Message from SiriusXM and Pandora

SXM has dozens of voice talents cutting dozens of promos a day for more than a dozen sports channels. The only sports channel that uses one that sounds unmistakably African-American is NBA Network Radio. So will we now hear that voice on the other sports channels that don't fit the stereotype or will the promos he voices just be played louder?
 
I'm sure everyone feels so much better now.

I read this as "we had better say something about this so that nobody criticizes us for not saying something. We can say something non-committal, non-actionable, and cost-free that makes us seem wok".

I think less of them for it.
 
I read this as "we had better say something about this so that nobody criticizes us for not saying something. We can say something non-committal, non-actionable, and cost-free that makes us seem wok".

I think less of them for it.

This is another example of their befuddled and ineffective PR department fumbling around trying to make a statement that just ends up being non-committal and vaporous.

The same PR department that thought it would be exciting to the rank-and-file of the company, to send out a company wide E-mail announcing that the CEO was receiving a 100% annual salary increase, from $9M to $18M. As with this recent statement regarding race relations, I'm sure the various employees of color within the organization are that much more proud to be working for SXM. (note sarcasm)
 
From The Pulse, channel #15:

At 3 p.m. ET today, we will be silencing SiriusXM’s music channels for three minutes — one minute to reflect on the terrible history of racism, one minute in observance of this tragic moment in time and one minute to hope for and demand a better future. This will serve as a tribute not only to George Floyd but to all of the countless victims of racism.
#TheShowMustBePaused
 
From The Pulse, channel #15:

At 3 p.m. ET today, we will be silencing SiriusXM’s music channels for three minutes — one minute to reflect on the terrible history of racism, one minute in observance of this tragic moment in time and one minute to hope for and demand a better future. This will serve as a tribute not only to George Floyd but to all of the countless victims of racism.
#TheShowMustBePaused

Just think of all those listeners (best case maximum 1.3% of all radio listening), who will tune-in ten seconds after they start and hear silence. After about 30 seconds of that, they tune out and won't be back the rest of today. What they should have done is go silent for 8 minutes, or approximately the amount of time the officer had his knee on Mr. Floyd's neck.

But hey, if it helps the SXM executives feel like they're doing something, isn't that what really matters?
 
Just think of all those listeners...who will tune-in ten seconds after they start and hear silence...
1. Appropriate music lead into the three minutes
2. That quote was read by the CEO or other key figure leading into the silence
3. A message was maintained on both fields of the screen before and during the silence
4. More appropriate music followed the silence
5. Everyone knew what was happening

More than thirty million subs represent ten percent of the population,
almost like NYC, LA, and Chi-town combined and most have families,
perhaps you entered that decimal point by mistake.
 
Last edited:
SXM still counts subs very differently than a normal human being would, don’t they? All the freebies they put out are still counted by them as subs, for example, right?
 
So, ai4i, are you saying that activated radios sitting in unsold cars on dealer lots are NOT now counted by SXM as a subscriber? And that the recently-purchased vehicles with free preview time are NOT now counted as subscribers?
 
They don't!
Three things remain the same:
A subscriber is a subscriber is a subscriber.

Yes, they do. A new car is active until the post sale free activation runs out.
 
SXM still counts subs very differently than a normal human being would, don’t they? All the freebies they put out are still counted by them as subs, for example, right?

Yes.
 
More than thirty million subs represent ten percent of the population,
almost like NYC, LA, and Chi-town combined and most have families,
perhaps you entered that decimal point by mistake.

But most only listen in the car, and car usage is way, way off.

A huge market for satellite is with folks over 55 who are of no interest to terrestrial radio.

Those of us who are retired or working from home are practically not driving at all.

One of our cars that averaged about 1500 miles a month has gone 142 miles in 60 days. The other has gone zero miles and the third one has a dead battery we won't take care of for months. We are not unique.

Oh, and when we did use the car, we listened to a local news and talk station to see if there was any interesting local news.

Finally, even with 30,000,000 subscribers, way less than 10% are listening at any given time. What percentage of the week are you in your car?

It's a niche audience.
 
But most only listen in the car, and car usage is way, way off.

A huge market for satellite is with folks over 55 who are of no interest to terrestrial radio.

Huge being a relative term. SXM subscribers peaked in numbers years ago at around 1.3% of the radio listening audience. Knowing they had reached the point of saturation, they decided to get into the streaming biz by buying Pandora. Of course the assumption with owning Pandora, is the Millennium listener-base comes with it. Problem was; just like the satellite radio side of things, the Pandora audience came in young but has grown older or moved on. Other newcomers have captured the younger audience, leaving SXM/Pandora back where they started.
 
Finally, even with 30,000,000 subscribers, way less than 10% are listening at any given time.
What percentage of the week are you in your car?
It's a niche audience.
1. And what percent of 325 million are listening at any time, perhaps eleven times as many as the 30 million?
2. I work full-time in my car and my TTR2 wakes me up to Luna (Latin Jazz) every morning.
Most if not all new accounts include streaming plus use of the SiriusXM mobile app.
3. It was niche (not to be confused with Nietzsche) eighteen years ago, but the deletion of a dozen channels including:
Beyond Jazz, Fine Tuning, Special X, The Village, Music Lab, World Zone and NGOMA from Worldspace (now Yazmi), and others have made them very mainstream.
4. The information that I read listed 30 million paying accounts.
 
2. I work full-time in my car and my TTR2 wakes me up to Luna (Latin Jazz) every morning.
Most if not all new accounts include streaming plus use of the SiriusXM mobile app.
3. It was niche (not to be confused with Nietzsche) eighteen years ago, but the deletion of a dozen channels including:
Beyond Jazz, Fine Tuning, Special X, The Village, Music Lab, World Zone and NGOMA from Worldspace (now Yazmi), and others have made them very mainstream.

Luna is the very definition of niche. I doubt its audience at any given moment tops low three figures. Channels like those were never contributing significantly to XM's bottom line. They were extensions of Lee Abrams different-just-to-be-different programming philosophy, exemplified by Special X and Music Lab. I always felt he loaded XM with fringe stuff in order to give the impression that he was sorry for what his "Superstars" format had done to free-form radio decades before. (Never bought into his sincerity for a second, though; "Superstars" made him a lot of money.)

XM's mainstream channels were never niche (which no sentient life form would ever confuse with a German philosopher), but even today, most of the service still is. Fourteen rock channels, only three duplicated to any great extent on commercial FM. Channels devoted to hits of the '40s, '50s and '60s -- none viable on commercial FM. A half dozen dance channels -- non-starters on commercial radio. An opera channel, a bluegrass channel, an alt-country channel, an easy listening channel, a reggae channel, a blues channel. Channels devoted to single artists, or big-name artists playing their favorite songs along with their own. Sport talk channels devoted exclusively to professional baseball, football, basketball, hockey, soccer, golf and wrestling/boxing/MMA, along with college sports, including several channels that only cover one athletic conference. And that's just what I can come up with off the top of my head. Overall, SiriusXM is still a niche medium.

I'm with David here. SiriusXM's growth potential was slim as a radio-only company. Acquiring Pandora and beefing up streaming options and programming were necessary for it to continue to attract positive buzz from Wall Street parasites, fortune tellers and hype merchants like Jim Cramer and Motley Fool. And yes, it's chasing a moving target that it hasn't managed to catch in its entire existence and is moving farther away with every passing month.
 
Status
This thread has been closed due to inactivity. You can create a new thread to discuss this topic.


Back
Top Bottom