• 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

Sirius-Xm merger Approved, sorry terrestrial

With gasoline prices increasing every day, this is a moot point. SiriusXM will die from bankruptcy as gasoline prices continue to soar.
 
I read up on them a week or 2 back on an investor website.

And IIRC neither one have them have EVER turned a quarterly profit. They've been burning through cash and consuming investor capital since day 1. At least terrestial radio understands how to make a profit.

And maybe combining the 2 will generate enough cost savings that they'll finally figureout how to make a profit, but until they do a couple of things, they're still going to have a problem.

#1 Until they convince the car companies to NOT install AM/FM radios, a new car buyer (which is a healthy majority of their new subscribers each month) is always going to have a free option a button punch away.

#2 Until they convince their listeners that it makes economic sense to pay 14.95 a month to listen. Because right now their churn numbers are still pretty high. People love the free subscription they get with their new car. But the conversion rate isn't huge. And of those that do extend, the churn rate per month is (IIRC) 2-3%. Or 25-36% per year. In other words, they're turning over their subscriber base every 3-4 years. Completely.

Which means they have to spend incredible amounts to gain new subscribers. (The figure I remember was a $60 per subscriber aquistion cost). Now take that 14.95 and conside rthey have to pay for the satellites, pay the jocks they do have, music rights, somebody to program all those stations, etc etc, and then factor in that 60 bucks. If they keep someone around for 3 years, that's a couple of bucks a month that goes just to pay for the cost it took to get that person to sign up. The longer they stay, the easier it is to prorate that cost, but what about when they have to amortize that 60 dollars all in one year? Suddenly from that 14.95 they only "made" 9.95. And still have to pay for all teh stuff I mentioned before, not to mention a 100mil to Howard, big bucks to NFL, NBA, MLB, Nascar, etc...
 
My new car came with XM. The worst aspect is that it kills reception at the upper end of the AM dial. Even b4 the Ticket tower fiasco I could not get the Ticket unless I was uptown. Can't get it 3 miles east of downtown. I'm told by the auto manufacturer "it's just one of those things." I let my sub end with XM, no change. Really a pisser for a former p1.
 
Never paid for it following the free period. I would have kept Sirius, just b/c I'm used to having it on Dish.
 
Why must the minority issue always be implied. The t-dial is loaded with minority formats now this. BTW what the heck is a minority????
 
Got ya, wasn't sure if that's what you meant.

But you illustrate a good point. You counted as an XM subscriber, even though you never sent them a dime. You counted as a 'listener', even if you NEVER punched over from AM or FM to your XM button(s).

My Dad has XM in his new car. But he never takes it off of Mark, Rush, Sean and Mark Levin (Dad's a tad conservative). The only reason he even has anything programmed on his car radio besides WBAP is I drive him around occasionally...And he da*n sure wouldn't have the XM programmed if I hadn't been bored one day and set him up with stuff he might like, just in case...

Both you and my Dad count as subscribers, even though you dont pay them don't plan to pay them, and you're just going to use their free service until it stops becoming free...Not brilliant economics from Xm and Sirius if you ask me...
 
Now the bloodbath begins. If you think terrestrial consolidation was bad, wait til you see this. Mel was the king of cutbacks at CBS. He actually has a bigger personal stake here. So a big chunk of every dollar he saves goes into his pocket.
 
I actually look forward to the merger. If they follow through on the a la carte services and pay plans, I would be extremely happy. We are current XM subscribers. We love the choices we get musically. We get something we currently don't get on OTA radio. No OTA station will go 24/7 hip hop classics, Gospel, new age, smooth jazz, electronica. If I can get rid of the stupid baseball play by play and save myself about 5 to 8 bucks a month, I'm all for it.
 
I agree salemjedi54... I look forward to the a la carte service... All I need is Alternative, Classic Alternative, Dance and Smooth Jazz. All things I can't get on FM here.

As for the gasoline comment in an earlier post... It is down to 3.79 this morning and will be 3.50 by Labor Day. ::)
 
I bought a life-time Sirius subscription 2 years ago after having a rental for a month that had it - and with that I've added 3 more as gifts at only $5.95/month subscriptions. I never have to buy my father-in-law another birthday present, I just pay for his annual service - quite a bargain! I am happy about the merger because I think it will only improve the strength of the service and provide options for new subscribers at lower costs. They know they have a lot of competition between terrestrial and iPods, etc. My favorite thing about sattellite is that I have continuity when I travel, and can get traffic updates for all the major cities I travel to in Texas. I know NAB has pulled out all the stops to quell this deal, and it makes me wonder why they see it as such a threat? I still listen to regular radio on occasion, but as soon as the long commercial breaks start I listen to a couple of songs before switching back. i'm just a consumer, not in the media biz, for what it's worth....
 
Satellite isn't 1/10th the threat to terrestrial radio that iPods and Internet Radio are.

Unless Mel can drastically reduce the cost per subscriber and retain people after the free trial ends, satellite is still a novelty technology that's losing cash hand over fist. How many Billions, to date, have XM and Sirius lost combined?

As far as the new music channels, we have XM on our DirecTV and XM's CHR playlist rotation is just as tight as, if not tighter than, KHKS. They rotate their hottest currents about every 90 minutes.

Why pay $10 or more a month when you can get a high-end iPod for around $200 and it'll store all the songs you've ever wanted (and then some) on it. You wanna hear "Flashlight," you dial it up. No need to wait until the 24/7 satellite station plays it.

All that's really missing from an iPod that you can hook to your car stereo is weather alerts and I wouldn't be surprised if they integrate weather radio into an iPod soon (if they haven't already).

I'll pay the $200 for an iPod that I have control over before I cede any money to a satellite provider.
 
Personally, I pay for Sirius due to my interest in talk / news radio.
10 years ago or so, KRLD was somewhat decent at that, with Alex what's his name, Charley Jones, CBS news at the top of the hour, etc.
There really isn't any 'talk' radio in the Dallas area now. (And by talk, I mean not necessarily right wing oriented, nor syndicated)
I listen to the Ticket, but only in smaller doses now. (They can tend to overreach their areas of expertise rather quickly when talk veers toward the political)

I did try live 105.3, but, man on man, I never 'got' that station. I can see there are plenty of people here who do not like Russ Martin. I don't 'hate' him, but I don't get why he has a show. Or how Pugs and Kelly managed to have a show. I have no feelings toward them at all beyond listening from time to time and wondering WTF?

At some point it'd be nice to hear talk radio without the outsized egos with guy talk grafted on after the fact.

Or not. I may just be talking outta my rear.
 
Everything about the deal sounds terrific.

We get to choose what to listen to and pay for it ONLY, and they will lower the price to justify it.

Enough Said! ;D
 
I've been in favor of this merger because I felt like without it the two services would probably go out of business. I think they're good competition for terrestrial radio.

I have XM and love it. (listening online right now to the AT40 countdown from July 22, 1978 on 70s on 7)

I agree with much of what was said earlier about what needs to be done to make this work. They have both burned through a ton of money launching satellites, building an infrastructure and paying for programming. It is time to find an economic model that allows them to make a profit. The problem they have is that they could fire ALL of their jocks (except for folks like Stern) and make only a tiny dent in the red ink. Merging the two operations into one building would help a bit. Putting advertising back on all the channels would help more. I would kind of hate that, but if it was kept to about 5 minutes an hour I don't think it would really hurt their subscriber rates.

One problem they're going to have is that the two radios are not interchangable right now. It's not possible to use your XM to hear Sirius programming, and vice versa. Even introducing new radios that will allow such a thing (essentially with two radios inside it) won't help much since they'll be more expensive and won't get much market penetration for a while.

Ultimately I think they're going to have to figure out a way to make the programming on the two services nearly identical. This will cut down on the number of overall channels they're programming. (between the two it's about 300 or so) That will then allow them to quit having to market separate programming on each service.

A la carte is fine if they've figured out what it will do for them. I am suspicious that it won't boost subscriber number smuch. I fear all it will really do is cut down on the revenue of the company among their current subscribers. That would be a disaster.

I bought a 5 year subscription when I got my car in 2003. It comes due this fall and I plan to resubscribe for another 5 years if they'll let me. :)

I used to work for Alliance Broadcasting which was sold to CBS radio. That experience taught me one thing that tells me this merger will work: Mel Karmazin is no dummy. He'll find a way to make this thing turn a profit.
 
jeffdfw said:
I agree salemjedi54... I look forward to the a la carte service... All I need is Alternative, Classic Alternative, Dance and Smooth Jazz. All things I can't get on FM here.

As for the gasoline comment in an earlier post... It is down to 3.79 this morning and will be 3.50 by Labor Day. ::)
Click to expand...

Yeah... and by then the price of oil per barrel will be below $100.00 ::)
 
Dallas-Fort Worth/Re: Sirius-Xm merger Approved, sorry terrestrial

tested said:
I used to work for Alliance Broadcasting which was sold to CBS radio. That experience taught me one thing that tells me this merger will work: Mel Karmazin is no dummy. He'll find a way to make this thing turn a profit.
Click to expand...

You're exactly right, and to do that, he'll do the exact same thing he did at CBS Radio, which was cut expenses to the bone, and jack up the amount of advertising or sponsorships.

I don't know exactly what he will do to attempt to increase revenues, especially considering the anemic listenership figures most of the channels have, but I expect that a lot of things that might have attracted some people to satellite will be changing as a result. The truth was they were going to have to change either way. But in this case, he can make these changes with a lot less fear. And when a company can act without fear, consumers usually lose.
 
StemCell said:
Why must the minority issue always be implied. The t-dial is loaded with minority formats now this. BTW what the heck is a minority????
Click to expand...

If you look at what's currently broadcast over Dallas radio....

Apparantly a minority, is a white male, that likes Hard Rock music, that is something other than Quiet Riot, Def Leppard, and Whitesnake ! Or the same 20 songs they've had in rotation that pose as Hard Rock over at the Bone, and 97.1.

Where's my White Zombie, Dream Theater, and Non-Pop-Rock Van Halen ? ? ?

Yeah, I know hwat it feels like to be in a minority allright ! ! !

What I Don't like about XM/Sirus is the degree of segmentation. Sort of:

Death Metal -- ALL THE TIME

Arena Rock -- ALL THE TIME

How about GrooVy Rock of all stripes.... ALL THE TIME ! Soemething OTHER THAN what we find on the Corporate Terrestrial Rock Playlists..... Something OTHER THAN..... The same 200 songs from the same 200 albums.....

But, we'll see..... How "Corporate" this XM/Sirius becomes, to "pay" their bills.....

It will porobably become ALL Personality Driven......

Loudmouth from all genres of the musical 'business'.... YAWN
 
Status
This thread has been closed due to inactivity. You can create a new thread to discuss this topic.


Back
Top Bottom