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Originally Posted by Kevin ? The PNN
Then expain why paid radio is not doing as well as expected?
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it actually is doing really well. Sirius added 3 million new subscribers just since Jan of this year. and they have gone from having around 600K subscribers to having over 4 million in about a year. and they continue to grow. XM is in trouble. they have lost NASCAR to Sirius. On stern they have people call XM and tell them they are canceling to go to sirius and the XM people are making deals with them to let them keep their subscriptions at $3 a month and crazy shit like that. Also XM has freaked at suddenly losing a lot of subscribers to sirius so they went out and dropped a ton of money on getting people like Oprah who will have little or no impact.
The big thing will be as new cars get built and they get sattelite radio put in the car. People can put the cost of the radio and a lifetime subscription on the price of the car. For a long time XM had deals with many auto makers. They are now losing market to sirius here too.
In the end I think O&A will get some listeners, but I think all it will do is make more people move to sattelite. I read today that there show will be 5 hours long. The first 3 hours will be broadcast on regular "free" radio. Then they will change studios and do two more uncensored hours for the XM subscibers. so if I'm listening to them I wonder what I'm missing and I may buy sattelite. Also, the irony of this is that CBS is suing Stern because they say he talked about sattelite too much. Now they are hiring guys who are on sattelite to do a part time show for them....classic.
I would predict that in 5 years sattelite will be huge. The religous right and the FCC will make "free" radio so bland that anyone who listens to any amount of radio will buy sattelite.