> Just mix in some deeper stuff from some of these artists. Like "The Last
> Resort" from the Eagles, or "After the Glitter Fades" from the Mac's Stevie > Nicks.
>
> I'm really digging XM Radio channel 40 right now. It is
> called Deep tracks, and it plays the stuff that never got
> played on radio from Springsteen, U2, Police, Clapton, etc.
>
Those of you who keep talking about satellite radio are missing the point entirely. You’re comparing apples with oranges. Satellite radio and terrestrial radio are two entirely different business models. Satellite is a national service that makes most of its money by selling a product (music/talk) to a buyer (subscribers). Radio is a local service that makes its money by selling a product (listeners) to a buyer (advertisers). For a radio station to succeed, it has to attract a reasonably large number of those listeners (preferably listeners in an attractive demo) who will, in turn, attract advertisers. A station playing deep album cuts would never work, because it would never attract more than a small handful of listeners in any given city. Satellite, on the other hand, has the entire nation from which to pull those listeners…and it has a lot of other similar “niche” formats that do the same. While the number of people (paying subscribers) listening to any one of those niche formats probably isn’t very impressive, the satellite service has the benefit of bundling enough of those different niche formats together to make it all worthwhile. Radio’s only hope is to offer something satellite can’t: localism. Local personalities, local traffic, local news, local phone calls about events that are interesting to Atlanta listeners but not necessarily to a national audience, local references to local “characters,” local, local, local! Radio CEO’s (most of who never worked in radio) missed that point when they started embracing the whole voice-tracking concept.
Now, they’re falling all over themselves to switch to “Jack” type formats, as if that could possibly compete with the 150 different channels offered by XM. They didn’t understand the problem, then. And, sadly, they still don’t have a clue.
