Stern may start early (like a year early) (1 Viewer)

[TheLongshot]

Except that Sirius seems to fit with that policy. They seem to want to appeal to normal joes who like what they hear from radio, for the most part, but are looking for a little more variety and no commercials.

Also, whatever you think of Mel, you can't argue with the success of Infinity and Viacomm. It may not be to my likeing, but he sure made it into a powerhouse.

As for Howard, it will be interesting to see if he does anything interesting with his freedom. Does he have anything beyond bitching about the FCC nowadays? I know he probably did back in the day, but what about now?

Jason

 

[Ralph B]

Stern Hype ? lol

when he gets here come back and then tell us how stern failed to bring in millions. which he will. there is no doubt!

there is no other person , program or music that could have the potential to bring in millions of listeners that stern has. wait and then see what you think of sirius having a sub spike when this all happens.



I see nobody could answer my questions above.


as much as I love baseball I think most people will be watching it on TV. with NFL its a nice option on that sunday if your away from home. but to have baseball hogging BW all the time is gonna piss some people off and most will be at home watching it, not counting the money spent. I think the NFL contract and howard contract pays off better.

 

[Chris]

I think the big trick is timing.

There are people who bitch on the SIRIUS forums in regards to NFL taking up say, the right wing/left wing radio stations on the weekend, and so forth. Now, that's on a Sunday, during repeats.

I'm imagining there will also be a few people unhappy with baseball pinching in normal channels during average days (M-F) on Air America / Right Wing type talk on XM, and so forth; because XM will pre-empt talk stations to do Baseball.

When you pre-empt repeats, people are unhappy (somewhat) but when you pre-empt lots of new programming, there will be some people who are unhappy.

 

[WillG]

I just can't believe that people will make the investment into Satellite because they want "a little more" variety. It sounds like the Sirius model is a little bit of a "preaching to the chior" sort of thing. If you want to make this service attractive to buyers and get them to pay for what they are used to getting for free, you have to make them feel like this is very different from terrestrial radio. XM is a bigger champion of this philosophy. Mel comes from coporate radio, a complete garbage dump. I don't think he'll add much more value to the service from a product standpoint. I think he is going to be focusing most of his attention on Howard and not much else.

But I've been wrong about these things before, so who knows.

 

[Chris]

Right now (this is just an FYI) XM is reporting it's subscriber base at about 2.6M. This is down from a high of 3.1M. HOWEVER, this is actually much better then people thought.. because many of these subscribers received a year of service from XM as a dealer incentive with their new car. This actually means the renewal rate on XM is probably greater then the threshhold (60%) which, in general, is what XM wanted. No one believed they would have a 100% renewal on the incentive, but a better then 50% clip is very good.

 

[TheLongshot]

There are a lot of people who just want to hear what they are familiar with, and don't really want to get exposed to stuff that they aren't familiar with.

I think the major incentive for these people is the commercial-free aspect. If you've listened to FM in the past few years, there is an ungodly amount of commercials. Just going to any service is a major improvement.

Hey, I like what XM does. They can be pretty darn creative of what they do play. At the same time, you do have to cater to the normal joes in some ways to get them in. On one hand is creating a good mix where you get enough well known stuff to hook people in, but enough different stuff to satisfy those of us who are looking for it. On the other is taking down some of the more unique content of XM for some other stuff that may be more popular. Personally, I think that's a mistake, since I think it is the unique stuff that makes the station.

Jason

 

[mike caronia]

I don't currently have either service, but the day Howard starts broadcasting I'm pretty sure I'll be listening. Along with millions of others. I don't think people realize how much a part of America's conscience Howard is.

 

[Jeff Adkins]

I see a few misconceptions have been accepted as fact here.

I don't see how the bandwidth is going to be any worse than it is on Saturdays with all the college football. XM will not be broadcasting both feeds of the MLB games, only one (much like Sirius does with the NBA). So you've got a max of 8 games, and some of those are day games, some are west coast games which will mean a slight overlap in some cases. This 16 games at-a-time stuff is just totally false. It's impossible.

I think O&A are more creative and talented than Stern is these days, but that's just my opinion. I've been following Stern since 1990 and I definitely think the potential is still there but the last few years or so have been rather tired. I just picked up a Sirius PNP just out of curiousity and the $59 price for the receiver and the car kit was way too good to pass up. I know I'm going to be curious to see what the first few weeks of Howard are like.

One thing that needs to be mentioned here though is that Stern is huge in certain large markets, he's a non-entity in much of the country.

 

[Michael St. Clair]

We're only the 30th (approximately; it changes) largest market in the country, and he is very popular here, taking first place among 18-35 year old males.

Don't forget the exposure of the E! Show. There's enough demand for Stern in markets like Arkansas (where he is NOT on the radio) where bars have paid thousands for promotional appearances by Stern show regulars like KC and Beetlejuice.

There's a bunch of people who know who Stern is and do want to listen but their local stations are too fearful of political and advertiser pressure.

 

[Chris]

The press release from the MLB and our local broadcasters tell us they will be broadcasting both feeds.

So, is the MLB wrong? I'm just saying, because that's the way it was represented in the NY Times.

Fine with them making more channels. So, how is the bitrate of other channels when all this is going on?

 

[Jeff Adkins]

Sure, I realize that. It's just that he's not heard in a lot of markets. I'm sure still has fans in markets where the show was cancelled (Minneapolis, Indianapolis, Myrtle Beach to name a few) and in cities where he isn't heard at all like Atlanta. I'm just curious as to how many people from those markets will buy Sirius.

Jeff

 

[Ralph B]

sirius NFL plays multiple (2) of each game on different channels. i also believe I have seen it with NBA too.

 

[Chris]

Yep. What I was saying is that SIRIUS pre-empts other channels (that is to say, if an NFL game is on, then say, SIRIUS Left or SIRIUS Right or Air America or another station goes off during the duration of the game) .. I was just asking the question because what was posed above is that no channel would be pre-empted, entirely new channels would be setup, dividing the bandwidth, which is something SIRIUS tried to avoid.

 

[Michael St. Clair]

I'd much prefer pre-empting of best-of and rerun programming instead of reducing the bitrate of music channels.

Of course, when weekdays are involved this may not be possible.

 

[Chris]

Ding. See, that's the point I'm trying to get at.. SIRIUS with the NFL has Sunday, when all the talk station are repeats and "best of the week" type shows. Whereas, with the MLB, you're going to be weekdays, during the daytime and evenings, so I figured they would have to pre-empt other programming.

The above note, though, says that no pre-emption, so new stations will be setup, so then I just had a different question.. how far can you divide up the bandwidth and keep quality?

I think that's something both providers will have to figure out.

 

[Michael St. Clair]

If they are like DirecTV and DISH, they certainly aren't going to tell us what they are doing with their compression. And like with the TV providers, I'm sure you'll start to hear some complaints on the internet forums if quality decreases further.

 

[Tim_Stack]

"Don't forget the exposure of the E! Show. There's enough demand for Stern in markets like Arkansas (where he is NOT on the radio) where bars have paid thousands for promotional appearances by Stern show regulars like KC and Beetlejuice."

I just listened to that story again yesterday...amazing that KC was put in charge of the Beet.

 

[Michael St. Clair]

I didn't think I was a huge KC fan but I miss him now that he is gone. The latest buzz is that he is not coming back.

 

[Tim_Stack]

Think it was the gambling problem or something else? Letting Beet hold on to the tape recorder that had everything he was working on for a week might have been the last straw. Losing $330K is a big wake-up call that the dude has a serious problem. Maybe he exploded at Howard off-air and they decided it was best for him to move on...dunno.

 

[Chris]

At this point, Infinity is saying at all cost they will hold him through the year; some affiliates, however, have begun bleeping parts of his show or cutting it up.

Infinity says they believe that Stern will alienate many of his fans by promoting alternative formats.