SXM has their political talk channels, separate from Howard 100, which did not carry Rush and have host continuity.
If anything, SXM's live hosts in mid-days stood to gain this spring after weeks of Rush-from-grave.
-
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
Shock jock Howard Stern enrages fans by announcing he's now taking entire summer off after signing $500M Sirius XM contract
- Thread starter TTalkradio1
- Start date
If anything, SXM's live hosts in mid-days stood to gain this spring after weeks of Rush-from-grave.
As someone already mentioned; SXM has a TON of popular left and right-leaning news talk shows. Stern's show isn't either.
I’ve heard this too, so I’m not saying you are wrong, but this seems questionable to me. If this was 10+ years ago, I would not question it, but I can’t imagine that your typical new Sirius subscriber is likely to be a Stern listener. I suppose it’s possible he has the most listeners just because Sirius may have very fragmented listenership across all of their channels and he happens to be number one sort of like how someone can win an election with only 20 percent of the vote if a lot of people are running. My guess is that their CHR channel is number one. The lack of new episodes for Stern also makes it unlikely that Howard 100 is still their most listened to channel.
That may be your guess but you'd be wrong. In fact their CHR channel isn't #2 either. The Highway is #2.
That's surprising. If you go by negative Facebook reactions, you'd think everyone wants it gone! Lots of "Where's Morgan Wallen?" posts are sabotaging nearly every thread, at least until SXM's moderators spot and delete them. (SiriusXM is still "canceling" Wallen long after many terrestrial stations have started playing his hits again, months after his "n-word" video surfaced.)
by what metric is Howard 100 their number 1 station and the Highway number 2? Time spent listening? Number of times listened for any length of time? Some combination of both? Since they don’t have the ability to measure most of their subscribers who are listening through satellite (as opposed to the app) how is it determined?
I don't readily have access to that data, but just streaming metrics alone would provide those analytic data points on a minute by minute basis.
Those are the same thing.
When looking at the stream metrics, you could even see what browser the listener was streaming from.
Apparently they do. Look, they just made a deal with Howard for a half a billion dollars. Howard makes more money than the Sirius CEO. A company doesn't do that on a whim.
I like Howard and was just asking a question. I’m glad they resigned him.
No, they don’t have the ability to measure all of their subscribers who are listening in a car through a satellite, but maybe they measure some listeners. If I’m incorrect I’m sure someone here will let me know but my understanding is that they aren’t able to measure subscribers who are listening through a satellite signal although they can through some newer radios.
Last edited:
yes, but what I meant was time spent listening (total amount of time listening over a given time period, say 30 minutes in a week) or numbers of times listened (someone who listened ten times in a week for any amount of time for example).
TSL stands for Time Spent Listening. In traditional radio, TSL is listening credited within 15 minute increments. Since a lot of SXM was born from the traditional radio model, I'd imagine they use a similar TSL-to demographic measurement(s) as the radio model. Since (Pandora) streaming is now under the same umbrella as satellite at SXM, any TSL measured for the various streams, could probably be assumed to carry over to satellite listening. If indeed Stern is #1 and The Highway is #2, (which I have no actual knowledge they are) then likely those rankings were derived from the ability to capture streaming metrics on a daily, or even hourly basis. Obviously, SXM are under no obligation to publish/disclose those metrics.
Exactly! In fact, a subscription-based service has no need to give listening data to anyone except those who analyze the channels to see which are the "good" and which are the "bad", sort of like that old song about Santa Claus deciding who gets a present and who gets a lump of coal.
While Sirius/XM may use selected data for those talk channels which do have commercials, there is no need to publish or reveal any other data at all.
They need to know how many different subscribers listen and, then, for how long. Based on the total listener count, they can compare with the Stern count to see how many subscribers make Stern an important part of their subscription and then calculate the ROI based on the total cost of the channel.
While they can't get average listenership and total listeners from most satellite installs, they can get the streaming count and extrapolate / project.
That is statistically reliable enough for them to bet hundreds of millions on. They obviously felt the name was big enough to give him the Summer off. The management at Sirius / XM calls on their analysts to help them make a decision, and we know that they have always done a pretty good job at creating a product that subscribers will pay for.
Some of their channels report to Billboard and Mediabase, so they need to provide usage information to those trades in order to calculate chart weights and justify reporting status. That's easy to do with broadcast radio. A bit harder when judging services such as Sirius and Music Choice. But somehow they manage to come up with numbers that satisfy the charts.
But they are "Network" numbers, which I believe at least BDS weights with a formula. And, if I am not mistaken (I'll check my BDS background data later) they data based on actual monitoring of the channels on satellite and does not require Sirius to reveal the actual subscriber numbers since the published data is derived by BDS using a weighting formula.
Last edited:
Seems to me they also need to calculate user numbers in order to pay SoundExchange. Unless it's strictly a percentage of revenue.
EDIT: I see now that satellite royalties are strictly a percentage of revenue.
Last edited:
Wasn't there commentary some years back that Sirius/XM had negotiated a special rate with SoundExchange based on consideration for the high compression and "closed" subscriber base of satellite? I don't recall if that was, though, a proposal or an actual "deed".
I heard Dick Wolf was developing "Law & Order: Music Licensing" for next season...
(Tongue firmly inserted in cheek)
Thing is he will probably be done in five years or less.
That assumption has been made for the past fifteen years.
- Status