finally a done deal after 18 months. It should have been approved in 90 days. It's been interesting to see how our government works, or actually, doesn't work. But hold on, if you're waiting to hear Howard Stern on your XM radio, it's not going to happen for (at minimum) a while (perhaps) and it will cost you an additional $4.95 per month. Howard will get a huge bump up from his present 8 million listeners to almost 20 million subscribers. Is there anyone else on either service that anyone cares about? No. The two companies will operate, according to CEO Mel Karmazin, as two separate entities for now. According to Karmazin, it will take about 10 years before we will see a combined XM/Sirius service satellite launched into orbit. What would really attract new subscribers to the combined services would be the addition of Rush Limbaugh. Beyond commercial free music, Howard Stern (with plenty of commercials) and Bill O'Reilly and (whiny) Lou Dobbs on Fox and CNN respectively, with tons of commercials, the real value of satellite radio is continuous uncensored reception without constantly having to search for a clear signal. Satellite radio lets you listen to one NPR station from Manhattan to Malibu by pressing one button. Terrestrial radio, on the other hand, is horrible, especially the annoying local car dealership commercials and blabbering program hosts and DJ's. The reception is localized and limited and 50,000 watt religious programming blasts in your radio for a few minutes then (thank goodness) disappears into the atmosphere where it belongs. Of course if it wasn't for Howard, Sirius would still be the #2 satellite company with far less than 1 million subscribers and XM would be struggling to survive. They should really call the new combined merged entities Stern Satellite. As far as the two "trucker" channels both XM and Sirius offers, who cares? Karmazin did say on the (of course) Howard Stern show, that there will be a combined Sirius/XM radio soon. No word on the price.
Friday, August 01, 2008
The Sirius/XM Merger is...
finally a done deal after 18 months. It should have been approved in 90 days. It's been interesting to see how our government works, or actually, doesn't work. But hold on, if you're waiting to hear Howard Stern on your XM radio, it's not going to happen for (at minimum) a while (perhaps) and it will cost you an additional $4.95 per month. Howard will get a huge bump up from his present 8 million listeners to almost 20 million subscribers. Is there anyone else on either service that anyone cares about? No. The two companies will operate, according to CEO Mel Karmazin, as two separate entities for now. According to Karmazin, it will take about 10 years before we will see a combined XM/Sirius service satellite launched into orbit. What would really attract new subscribers to the combined services would be the addition of Rush Limbaugh. Beyond commercial free music, Howard Stern (with plenty of commercials) and Bill O'Reilly and (whiny) Lou Dobbs on Fox and CNN respectively, with tons of commercials, the real value of satellite radio is continuous uncensored reception without constantly having to search for a clear signal. Satellite radio lets you listen to one NPR station from Manhattan to Malibu by pressing one button. Terrestrial radio, on the other hand, is horrible, especially the annoying local car dealership commercials and blabbering program hosts and DJ's. The reception is localized and limited and 50,000 watt religious programming blasts in your radio for a few minutes then (thank goodness) disappears into the atmosphere where it belongs. Of course if it wasn't for Howard, Sirius would still be the #2 satellite company with far less than 1 million subscribers and XM would be struggling to survive. They should really call the new combined merged entities Stern Satellite. As far as the two "trucker" channels both XM and Sirius offers, who cares? Karmazin did say on the (of course) Howard Stern show, that there will be a combined Sirius/XM radio soon. No word on the price.
