The reason Imus lost his gig was not because he did something illegal, but because he offended advertisers.\u00c2\u00a0 Oh sure, one could say he offended listeners too, but how many of those ranting and raving about his language listened to his show to BEGIN WITH?<\/p>\n
Bottom line, Imus has fans.\u00c2\u00a0 And now those fans are shit out of luck.<\/p>\n
Maybe Imus will take his money and go home.\u00c2\u00a0 But that’s not the American story.\u00c2\u00a0 America is about rehabilitation.\u00c2\u00a0 And, Al Campanis had no fans.\u00c2\u00a0 There’s a market for Imus.\u00c2\u00a0 But where?<\/p>\n
Not on terrestrial radio.\u00c2\u00a0 The usual suspects are too scared.<\/p>\n
But how about the wild west of satellite radio?\u00c2\u00a0 It’s a natural home for the I-Man.<\/p>\n
But all the spin says he’s not gonna go.\u00c2\u00a0 Because satellite has advertisers too.\u00c2\u00a0 But not enough to make a difference.\u00c2\u00a0 Who needs the FRIENDS of Oprah, who needs to build from scratch when you can start with a legend, who brings HIS OWN AUDIENCE!<\/p>\n
That’s what Sirius did with Howard Stern.\u00c2\u00a0 And it was a master stroke, without Howard Sirius would already be bankrupt.<\/p>\n
But now it’s XM that’s in trouble.\u00c2\u00a0 The service has got no buzz.\u00c2\u00a0 XM needs to be dangerous, it needs to leave a mark, it needs Imus.<\/p>\n
Now chances are if Imus resurfaces on satellite, he’ll go to Sirius, after all he’s got a preexisting relationship with Mel Karmazin.\u00c2\u00a0 But if XM loses Imus and the merger doesn’t happen…\u00c2\u00a0 How is the service going to recover?\u00c2\u00a0 Read today’s "Wall Street Journal", there IS no radio talent left out there, nobody XM can put on the airwaves to counter Imus and his audience.\u00c2\u00a0 Imus is one of the last best players.\u00c2\u00a0 Along with Tom Joyner.\u00c2\u00a0 Put Adam Carolla on satellite and you’ll get a big yawn.\u00c2\u00a0 Put Imus on, and imagine the PRESS!<\/p>\n
Oh, you know Mel will weasel.\u00c2\u00a0 Say it’s got nothing to do with content, but feeding demand.\u00c2\u00a0 And how can you battle with a service that’s got so many edgy voices to begin with, from Eminem to even Martha Stewart.\u00c2\u00a0 But can XM thread this needle?<\/p>\n
Sirius is Howard Stern, XM is..?<\/p>\n
This is XM’s final bite at the apple, will they fuck it up?<\/p>\n
You know if there were no merger pending, they’d be all over Imus.\u00c2\u00a0 But this is what consolidation brings you.\u00c2\u00a0 BOTH services can keep Imus at arm’s length, since he’s got nowhere else to go.\u00c2\u00a0 Like Clear Channel’s gonna make a deal with him.\u00c2\u00a0 That’s the fallacy of Mel Karmazin’s theory about competition.\u00c2\u00a0 There’s no podcast market, Imus isn’t gonna make it on iPods, and he’s too dangerous for terrestrial radio conglomerates to make a deal.\u00c2\u00a0 Oh, he could syndicate station by station, but what hard work when he can instantly reach the whole country, MORE of the landscape than he presently does, if he goes to satellite.<\/p>\n
And now you know why the satellite services got into trouble to begin with.\u00c2\u00a0 Competition, outspending each other.\u00c2\u00a0 That’s why they want the merger.\u00c2\u00a0 To pay people like Imus LESS!\u00c2\u00a0 Imus fits satellite the way "The Sopranos", "Entourage" and "Big Love" fit HBO.\u00c2\u00a0 Stuff so edgy that you’ve got to keep it out of the reach of FCC oversight.<\/p>\n
These duplicitous fucks in satellite radio want to deny a fair price for talent, and want to deny listeners the content they desire.\u00c2\u00a0 That’s what this merger is all about.<\/p>\n
But maybe there’s a chance that the merger won’t happen.\u00c2\u00a0 As insurance, Imus must go to XM.<\/p>\n
It’s a natural fit.\u00c2\u00a0 XM is in D.C., where all those politicians Imus interviews are located.\u00c2\u00a0 They can move him down to Washington and build him a special studio, just like Sirius did with Howard.\u00c2\u00a0 They can get endless ink.\u00c2\u00a0 As long as they don’t wait too long.<\/p>\n
The tide is turning on Imus.\u00c2\u00a0 The backlash has begun.\u00c2\u00a0 Sure, what he said was bad, but what about everybody else?\u00c2\u00a0 He can come back.\u00c2\u00a0 And everybody will be watching.\u00c2\u00a0 They’ll want to know what he has to say, whether he’s changed, whether he’s cleaned up his act.\u00c2\u00a0 This is not Howard Stern leaving terrestrial at the height of his popularity, this is a niche guy most of the public didn’t pay attention to who now is the biggest story in the media.\u00c2\u00a0 All eyes are on him.\u00c2\u00a0 You’ve got to CAPITALIZE ON THIS!<\/p>\n
Oh, I wouldn’t bring him back on the air immediately.\u00c2\u00a0 I’d make the deal right away, but let him serve a suspension.\u00c2\u00a0 Then I’d rehabilitate his image, get him in "People", all over the TV talk shows.\u00c2\u00a0 Retaining his edge, his personality, but saying he fucked up and certain things are beyond the pale.\u00c2\u00a0 And then, he’ll be on XM and the media will cover everything he says.\u00c2\u00a0 And thereafter, XM will have an identity.\u00c2\u00a0 As the Imus station.\u00c2\u00a0 They’ll stand for something.\u00c2\u00a0 Sure, in a perfect world they could stand for something better, but they’ve fumbled the ball till now.\u00c2\u00a0 They could have been the music service, but they never got that message across.\u00c2\u00a0 Instead they’ve got Snoop who’ll play for anybody who’ll pay, an old coot fired from NPR and Oprah’s buddies and baseball.\u00c2\u00a0 Baseball’s a good one, but what if you don’t LISTEN to baseball?\u00c2\u00a0 You’ve got to have something more.\u00c2\u00a0 You’ve got to have Imus.\u00c2\u00a0 You’ve got to take the ball from Sirius.\u00c2\u00a0 You’ve got to get the mo.<\/p>\n
This is XM’s defining moment.\u00c2\u00a0 If they don’t get Imus and the merger doesn’t happen, they’re toast, they’re a distant also-ran.<\/p>\n
Now’s the time to throw the Hail Mary pass.\u00c2\u00a0 Does XM have the balls?<\/p>\n
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The reason Imus lost his gig was not because he did something illegal, but because he offended advertisers.\u00c2\u00a0 Oh sure, one could say he offended listeners too, but how many of those ranting and raving about his language listened to his show to BEGIN WITH? Bottom line, Imus has fans.\u00c2\u00a0 And now those fans are […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-760","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-radio"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p96vPs-cg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/760","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=760"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/760\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=760"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=760"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=760"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}