How XM Killed Itself … Sirius-ly, I’m not kidding
I believe that competition between companies is a good thing. It’s especially exciting when you see the Davids of an industry kick the butts of the Goliaths. Dinosaurs died out for a reason, kids. Of course, it’s just as rewarding to watch a company that has been cheating you out of your money, lose out to a business that works hard to earn your respect and dollars. Sometimes in those cases, the stronger will merge with the weaker, capitalizing on the few strengths of the lesser company while weeding out the flaws. In the end, we as a consumer are the ultimate winner.
You would have thought this was going to be the case with the merger between XM and Sirius satellite radios. XM (trading at over $8 a share) had many more subscribers because of its unique range of radio stations and its adherence to the motto “commercial free radio.” Sirius, on the other hand, plugged away with commercialized channels that broadcasted only what it thought the mainstream of listeners wanted. Gee, I wonder why it was trading at $0.25 a share?
On November 12th, I turned on my XM satellite radio and listened to the first day results of their merger. XM changed the format of its new broadcast — not to commercial free, unique channels — but to the Sirius style of commercial-filled, mainstream, AM/FM type stations. Also surprising was the news that XM had just fired 80 popular radio personalities and removed their channel or morphed those stations into perverse Sirius counterparts. If you are a big fan of jazz fusion and of “Beyond Jazz”, you know what happened.
I’ve been reading various blogs over the past few days about XM’s switch over. The comment “have canceled my subscription” appears more times than I think Sirius has had subscribers. If you are a little upset by this changeover, here’s a couple of e-mail addresses for you send your gentle thoughts to:
jon.zellner@xmradio.com
sgreenstein@siriusradio.com
At the moment, I am contemplating my subscription. If I wanted to listen to AM/FM stations, I would not have subscribed to satellite radio. I think someone got a little greedy with their short-term thinking …
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