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Howard Stern Credited For 69K New Sirius Subscribers
from the not-bad dept
Sirius is claiming that the announcement that Howard Stern would be joining their programming ranks has helped them sign up 69,000 new subscribers, pushing their total subscribers over 700,000 (still well below XM). Of course, those 69,000 Stern fans may not be all that thrilled when they realize that Stern doesn't move to Sirius until sometime in 2006. Still, despite this and a bunch of other deals both satellite radio players have made lately (including finally announcing plans to figure out some way to interoperate on a single platform), it's not clear that either company can actually make money. Both have piled up tremendous losses, and keeping the satellites operating isn't cheap.
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Well actually
The satellites are pretty much autonomous up there. It's not like some tech guy is performing service calls up there. I think you meant that keeping the programming infrastructure going is what costs money.
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Still needs to be more convenient
A dual chip for cars would be a good step. So would arranging to get that chip into all new cars at zero dollars (the customer pays for the service if they want it). I've been shopping for new Chryslers, and unless it is special ordered it is tough to find one with Sirius, and the dealer add-on version lacks features of the factory unit.
While getting it small enough might be a challenge, the device that would be convenient enough to be a killer product would be an iPod style HD music player (for favorite tunes) that also does XM or Sirius radio, could plug into new cars through a dock or interface with wireless like bluetooth, connect to a home stereo, and work on-the-go with headphones. That would be accessible anywhere (like FM radio) and useful enough for more than a few million people to want.
Without something like that, a lot of people will be satisfied with an MP3/AAC player where they program their own music.
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Big Money Upfront
The money Sirius and XM had to put up in the development stage—to Hughes satelite, the Government, the automakers, the licensing,
etc—was huge and I've always wondered how long their biz plans gave them to finally see a profit ...
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