Sirius-Xm merger Approved, sorry terrestrial

[Lancer]

It's a whole lot better than the old days, when more than a third of the stations in the country were automated, running pre-recorded reel to reel tapes.

I remember when my dad took my 5th grade self to a radio station in the 70's. They had a wall of reel to reels for music & voice, plus a couple of carousels for commercials. I thought it was better than Sam The Robot, Cornflake S. Pecially's factory & Chitty Chitty Bang Bang combined. Tapes were mailed to the station from California. That was for the FM, their AM was live.

Neat seeing that contraption work back then, but live programming is better.

 

[TheBigA]

The merger is a good thing because without the merger both companies would have most likely gone under.

I'm sure the NAB will remember that justification when a bunch of terrestrial companies want to merge. If consolidation is so bad, and has ruining radio, why is it OK in satellite?

Newspapers are dying and before the big ones go they need to diversify by buying electronic media when and where they can.

And yet the Congress wants to prevent newspapers from buying broadcasting. Why are they willing to save satellite radio, but not newspapers?

As to voice-tracking, you said that it gave opportunities for more money to radio personalities. What it really did was cut costs for the operators. Those cuts included many jobs that the voice trackers put on the unemployment line.

If that's a problem, then people should not be so willing to take the money. The point is that it's NOT, as you said, scripted, and the performance is NOT, as you said, more controlled. Unless the particular DJ is lazy and just goes through the motions. A voicetracked show can be and usually is just as creative as a live show.

Back to the topic, do you realize that almost all of the music shows on Sirius and XM are voice-tracked?

If there is a way to recapture any of that magic, I'm all for it!

You've already done it. Be your own boss, and then the only person you have to complain about is yourself.

 

[clevethedog]

Back to the topic, do you realize that almost all of the music shows on Sirius and XM are voice-tracked?

It's more common on Sirius vs XM as the majority of DJs on Sirius are part-time. The majority of music channels on XM are live at least 12 hours a day. Not all channels need a DJ and are programmed accordingly. The Decades channels (4,5,6,7,8,9) have live DJs most of the time (unless they are running a retrospective of a terristerial station of the era - listening to KHJ in the 60's and 70's brings back lots of memories). Some of the rock channels (speciofically 49) do not have DJs, which makes sense for the genre.

I would recommend a tour of "The Eck" in Washington DC for anybody interested in radio, it's very enlightening. Working for them was even more interesting.

 

[TheBigA]

I would recommend a tour of "The Eck" in Washington DC for anybody interested in radio, it's very enlightening. Working for them was even more interesting.

Get there quickly. Mel was there today measuring the floors for rental properties. I expect him to turn a big chunk into condos by the fall.

 

[clevethedog]

Get there quickly. Mel was there today measuring the floors for rental properties. I expect him to turn a big chunk into condos by the fall.

HAHA Sirius needs to find a way to pay the rent on their NYC HQ (XM owns The Eck, plus it is the emergency alternate power source for Congress).

 

[RADIO TRUTH]

Just like with the Sears, K-Mart merger, the XM, Sirius merger means two smaller, crappier
companies becoming one bigger, crappier company. Since the merger was announced, the stocks prices have gone even further down. XM and Sirius cannot and will not be able to compete with the growth of WIMAX being as common as cell phone coverage. WIMAX will also render all local radio irrelevant. It's one thing when you have an artificial monopoly based on a limited amount of frequencies in the spectrum but, those days are over for both over-the-air and satellite radio. What can satellite radio possibly provide that anyone would want to pay for when they will be able to get 10000 times as many choices on internet and be able to receive it anywhere?

 

[TheBigA]

What can satellite radio possibly provide that anyone would want to pay for when they will be able to get 10000 times as many choices on internet and be able to receive it anywhere?

Receive it ANYWHERE? Surely you jest. Have you tried using cell phones in West Virginia?

The issue will be cost. Sprint isn't spending billions to give the service away for free. Radio is free.

 

[RADIO TRUTH]

There are two competing WIMAX technologies and competition between those two technologies and minimal competition from the terminal satellite radio industry will bring prices down.

 

[Dndsh237]

It's a whole lot better than the old days, when more than a third of the stations in the country were automated, running pre-recorded reel to reel tapes.

I remember when my dad took my 5th grade self to a radio station in the 70's. They had a wall of reel to reels for music & voice, plus a couple of carousels for commercials. I thought it was better than Sam The Robot, Cornflake S. Pecially's factory & Chitty Chitty Bang Bang combined. Tapes were mailed to the station from California. That was for the FM, their AM was live.

Neat seeing that contraption work back then, but live programming is better.

Hmmmm.... Was this common practice back then? My mom's cousin worked for an FM / AM combo, that operated exactly as you described! I don't recall what stations they were, as I was a young one back then. IIRC it was a small town market.

 

[Lancer]

It's a whole lot better than the old days, when more than a third of the stations in the country were automated, running pre-recorded reel to reel tapes.

I remember when my dad took my 5th grade self to a radio station in the 70's. They had a wall of reel to reels for music & voice, plus a couple of carousels for commercials. I thought it was better than Sam The Robot, Cornflake S. Pecially's factory & Chitty Chitty Bang Bang combined. Tapes were mailed to the station from California. That was for the FM, their AM was live.

Neat seeing that contraption work back then, but live programming is better.

Hmmmm.... Was this common practice back then? My mom's cousin worked for an FM / AM combo, that operated exactly as you described! I don't recall what stations they were, as I was a young one back then. IIRC it was a small town market.

I think it was pretty common back then. This one was in Hot Springs, AR. It was then KACQ 106.3 FM & KXOW 1420 AM - they had country on both, FM automated & AM was live. It was a fun visit.

I agree with other posts that most of the music is voice-tracked on satellite. Like Barry Williams (Greg Brady) on Sirius Totally 70's.

 

[Dndsh237]

I think it was pretty common back then. This one was in Hot Springs, AR. It was then KACQ 106.3 FM & KXOW 1420 AM - they had country on both, FM automated & AM was live. It was a fun visit.

Rats... Not the same station my mom's cousin worked for. Oh well, I know it's a small world, but I guess not that small. The one my mom's cousin worked for, was in or near Brady, TX.

 

[TheBigA]

There are two competing WIMAX technologies and competition between those two technologies and minimal competition from the terminal satellite radio industry will bring prices down.

You sound like the guys in Congress who promised me my cable bills would get cheaper. Guess what? They were wrong.

Hardware gets cheaper. HDTVs, computers, and cell phones. But the interconnection doesn't get cheaper. They keep finding ways to add more charges and more costs.

 

[elokiddy]

wasn't part of the merger agreement to freeze prices for some years?

 

[buttonpuncher]

Just like with the Sears, K-Mart merger, the XM, Sirius merger means two smaller, crappier
companies becoming one bigger, crappier company. Since the merger was announced, the stocks prices have gone even further down. XM and Sirius cannot and will not be able to compete with the growth of WIMAX being as common as cell phone coverage. WIMAX will also render all local radio irrelevant. It's one thing when you have an artificial monopoly based on a limited amount of frequencies in the spectrum but, those days are over for both over-the-air and satellite radio. What can satellite radio possibly provide that anyone would want to pay for when they will be able to get 10000 times as many choices on internet and be able to receive it anywhere?

I travel a lot with my job and XM has made it tolerable. But I recently picked up the new iPhone 3G and downloaded a couple of programs into it that stream audio and it works amazingly well on the road. In areas with 3G coverage the audio quality on the high bitrate streams is better than XM.

There are hundreds of choices of streaming radio stations and streaming only channels. The "AOL Radio" program is loaded with CBS Radio stations and genre specific channels that display artist/title and album cover. The “Tuner” program has what looks essentially the ShoutCast list of stations. Also, AAC & MP3 stream addresses can be manually entered and saved as bookmarks. The unlimited data plan that includes this, plus YouTube, internet browsing & email is $30/mo.

Still, there are many areas of the country without cell phone service where sat radio won't let you down so I'm keeping the XM too.

 

[TheRover]

There are two competing WIMAX technologies and competition between those two technologies and minimal competition from the terminal satellite radio industry will bring prices down.

You sound like the guys in Congress who promised me my cable bills would get cheaper. Guess what? They were wrong.

Hardware gets cheaper. HDTVs, computers, and cell phones. But the interconnection doesn't get cheaper. They keep finding ways to add more charges and more costs.

My BASIC cable Bill has gone up 40% since Time Warner took over from Comcast about 2 years ago in Dallas. To add to that misery.... Time-Warner took away the Mini-Weather Channel. THEY HAVE ADDED NO CHANNELS TO BASIC, BUT THEY INCREASE THE PRICE BY 40%.

AND THIS IS OKAY WITH CONGRESS ? ? ? ?

THANKS FOR NOTHING !!!!! UNCLE SAMMY!!

 

[RADIO TRUTH]

If audio quality means something to you, I know of a few internet only radio programmers who deliver their audio at a cd quality level encoded at 128 and with superior audio processing, which is far superior to the audio quality on XM, Sirius or any streaming over-the-air station.

 

[Lancer]

If a big part of merger deals is to freeze prices, why didn't they do that for oil when they merged? We wouldn't be paying $4/gallon if they would have done that.

Instead they are worried about someone paying more than 12.95 a month for a luxury instead of necessity item. Drug it out 16 months because it was so important.

Got their priorities crooked.