It's a balancing act. If SXM retains, or even adds, air talent on its music channels, it risks losing many current or potential subscribers in their 20s or 30s who grew up with mixtapes and iPods and customized streaming. The subscribers who prefer motormouth DJs are growing older and falling away due to natural causes or financial constraints, with no younger generation to replace them.
Christmas music for nearly a full month on the only channel that programs country music from the booming '80s and '90s -- a style of country that's in the midst of a revival -- also strikes me as a boneheaded move. If country Christmas music were a subgenre that most country listeners wanted to hear, don't you think more FM mainstream country stations would be going all-Christmas? But most of them aren't, and their listeners seem fine with that, though some drift to the saccharine seasonal songs played on adult contemporary stations during December.
Tough call for SXM to make, definitely. Sending all the jocks packing would certainly excite Wall Street (fewer employees = bigger profit) and position SXM better with the current generation. But the current subscriber base skews older, and there's no guarantee that the exodus of lovers of old-fashioned personality radio would be replaced or exceeded by the influx of younger listeners who want wall-to-wall music.