aTypical Joe: a gay New Yorker living in the rural South

Tuesday, October 03, 2006

R U Sirius

Reading the Lefsetz Letter for his terrific take on Mark Cuban (”how quickly the young become old farts”) I happened on to his missive on Howard Stern & Sirius.

He begins by counting the ways that Sirius sucks - 1.) reception, 2.) limited playlists and 3.) deejay patter - then moves on to an ode to Howard, “Howard speaking truth. THIS is why people tune in.” And sums up:

It appears that satellite radio is heading for a cliff.  Especially Sirius.  For Sirius gives a free one year subscription with the new cars of companies they’re aligned with, and so many of those one years are about to run out.  And the churn rate on free car hookups for XM aren’t much better.  Supposedly, there’s now a fifty percent DISCONNECT RATE!

Satellite radio is yesterday’s news.  Fighting between themselves, XM and Sirius ruined their financials and just didn’t get their message across to consumers, who now have options, like the iPod.  XM is a music goldmine, not that you’d know that from the marketing.  Yet somehow someone convinced these guys it was about stars, and stars don’t matter, unless they’re RADIO stars, like Howard Stern.

It’s almost like the sixties all over again.  Something is happening on the fringe, in the underground, if you’re hip you belong, otherwise you’re out of the loop.  But the difference here is Howard was mainstream FIRST!  Will he end up bringing people to him?  Not listening, you’d have to say no.  But catch his Sirius show and you start to wonder, if somehow people could only hear what they’re missing, if only they could get a taste, they’d want more.  MUCH more.

Here in rural Georgia, where we’re stuck in a rustic radio version of Bruce Springsteen’s 1992 57 channels and nothing on (8 are owned by Cumulus, 20 are religious broadcasters) satellite radio is more popular than I’d have thought.

With the FCC locking up our culture through prudish censorship, I find myself happy to see that the 1st Amendment is owned by big corporations who will stop at nothing to sell it back to us.