You want satellite radio to be successful.\u00c2\u00a0 And when it becomes so, you’re going to bitch.<\/p>\n
I love a good argument.\u00c2\u00a0 I like debating the merits of different media, different TV shows and music.\u00c2\u00a0 Hell, that was the domain of the fan, passionate discussion.\u00c2\u00a0 But if you’re still arguing about talent, about quality, I’m wondering if you got the memo that no one’s paying attention, that no one cares.\u00c2\u00a0 Today’s landscape is so scattered, so overwhelming, so incomprehensible, that at best listeners are into a certain kind of music, a few acts, a great number of people have just tuned out.<\/p>\n
Don’t pay attention to the mainstream media.\u00c2\u00a0 It’s written for those paying attention to television, to Top Forty radio, and the true music fan gave up on those decades ago.\u00c2\u00a0 There’s writing for niches, but the hoi polloi just walk on by, they don’t care, they’ve been burned by indie rock, world music and all the hypes of years gone by.\u00c2\u00a0 We can’t break acts, we can’t sell tonnage, whether it be tracks or tickets, because no one knows what to listen to, no one knows what to buy.\u00c2\u00a0 He who creates the first filter, the trustworthy arbiter of quality, is going to reign in the twenty first century.\u00c2\u00a0 Satellite radio is poised to become that filter.<\/p>\n
Let’s just limit our discussion to the car.\u00c2\u00a0 That’s where radio is king.\u00c2\u00a0 Sure, people listen at home, but the real money, the main activity, is in the automobile, where you’re a captive audience.<\/p>\n
Now radio has been threatened not so much by the CD or the iPod, but by the cell phone.\u00c2\u00a0 A great number of people are not listening to music in the car at all.\u00c2\u00a0 They’ll only stop talking and start listening when what’s coming out of the speakers is more interesting than the blather coming out of their hand-set.\u00c2\u00a0 As for the CD…that’s passe.\u00c2\u00a0 As for the iPod, it never plays anything you don’t know.\u00c2\u00a0 And you want to hear what you don’t know, you want to be exposed to new things, it’s human nature.<\/p>\n
Don’t tell me about Net radio.\u00c2\u00a0 If it ever makes it to the automobile, it’s far away.\u00c2\u00a0 There has to be wireless infrastructure and the auto manufacturers must agree to install\/sell it.\u00c2\u00a0 Good theoretically, but a nonstarter practically.<\/p>\n
But satellite radio.\u00c2\u00a0 It’s in all new cars.\u00c2\u00a0 Has been in most for years.\u00c2\u00a0 The key is to get people to tune in, to pay for it.<\/p>\n
It’s not like nobody’s listening.\u00c2\u00a0 There are almost twenty million subscribers between the two services.\u00c2\u00a0 But if you pony up, you find out you’re in the wilderness, not a member of any club, not one of any size, and that freaks you out and you abandon your subscription.\u00c2\u00a0 But what if you needed your subscription?<\/p>\n
This merger might be the best thing to happen to Howard Stern.\u00c2\u00a0 He might get his national platform back.<\/p>\n
Sirius is run by a radio\/business maverick.\u00c2\u00a0 Focused on the bottom line.\u00c2\u00a0 Mel Karmazin doesn’t care what comes out of the speakers, he just wants to get paid.\u00c2\u00a0 He wants his stations\/service to make money.\u00c2\u00a0 This is scary if you’re into quality programming.\u00c2\u00a0 Karmazin might have championed and protected Howard Stern and KROQ, but he also added a plethora of advertising units.\u00c2\u00a0 Mel Karmazin is not your friend.<\/p>\n
And the service he lords over has a huge reception problem.\u00c2\u00a0 Dropouts are constant.\u00c2\u00a0 The buffer is too short, the satellites keep moving.\u00c2\u00a0 But when it works, the sound is good, better than XM if you’ve got a quality set-up.<\/p>\n
But what comes out of the speakers is jive.\u00c2\u00a0 It’s everything you hate about terrestrial, minus the commercials.\u00c2\u00a0 Two-fer Tuesdays.\u00c2\u00a0 Lame cheerleading.\u00c2\u00a0 News you read online the day before.\u00c2\u00a0 It’s positively eighties, made for an audience that doesn’t exist.<\/p>\n
But at least you hear voices on Sirius.\u00c2\u00a0 Frequently on XM not only do you feel like you’re the only person listening, you don’t think the deejay is tuned in either.\u00c2\u00a0 For he comes on infrequently, if at all.\u00c2\u00a0 The XM brass saved money in the wrong sphere.\u00c2\u00a0 The product is the essence of your success.\u00c2\u00a0 In this case, the programming.<\/p>\n
And as tight as Sirius is programmed, that’s how loose XM can be.\u00c2\u00a0 You might hear a track once a year, which is just too damn weird.\u00c2\u00a0 There’s no consistency, no club.\u00c2\u00a0 In an era when social networking is king, there’s no social network on XM whatsoever.<\/p>\n
But XM comes in loud and clear almost everywhere, albeit compressed.<\/p>\n
So maybe the merged company moves the signal to XM’s satellites.\u00c2\u00a0 But I’m afraid Sirius’ programming philosophy will win out, especially with Lee Abrams having jumped to the Tribune Company.\u00c2\u00a0 And that’s why you’ll be pissed.\u00c2\u00a0 The repetition and the jive jocks.\u00c2\u00a0 But if everybody is listening, you’ll be able to break records.<\/p>\n
A Leona Lewis gets all the ink because you can break that kind of act.\u00c2\u00a0 Try breaking the new Genesis.\u00c2\u00a0 Who would play them, where would the music be exposed?\u00c2\u00a0 But if everybody is tuned into the same satellite stations, you achieve critical mass.<\/p>\n
Satellite radio could still win.\u00c2\u00a0 If it cooked up a business model with a lower economic threshold, where people could sign up for less than $12.95 a month, or could get an advertiser-supported service free.\u00c2\u00a0 Satellite radio is poised, because it has the infrastructure.\u00c2\u00a0 It’s ready.<\/p>\n
A merger is bad for the purveyors of talent.\u00c2\u00a0 Now, there’s only one place to sell your wares if you want a national footprint.\u00c2\u00a0 If satellite radio takes off, you run into the Clear Channel problem, where a behemoth has too much power.\u00c2\u00a0 No one at the Justice Department seems to listen to radio, they couldn’t foresee the pitfalls.\u00c2\u00a0 But a radio service with critical mass, that most people in America tune into, that would be good not only for the service itself, but the makers and purveyors of music.<\/p>\n
Satellite radio has a chance.\u00c2\u00a0 Root for it.<\/p>\n
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