It seems to me XM is on a downward spiral. First they lost Nascar (which I don’t care about, but apparently a lot of people do) and now apparently they have music stations with commercials (their 100% commercial free music slogan disappeared) and now Opie & Anthony, which I think is XM’s most popular original show, won’t exclusively be on XM either and on regular radio for free. What exactly will draw new subscribers to XM??

O&A went to satellite because regular radio wouldnt hire them, not because they were ‘constantly being fined’. O&A were never on K-Rock, they were on WNEW. Also, O&A are proven draws in radio, they were constantly first among their demo (male 18+) when they were on in NYC.

neverender: what exactly is howard sterns pace? O&A already has a bigger audience on XM then howard does on sirius, and now they are nationally syndicated and allowed to plug XM all day long on the air. how is this bad?

O&A are the greatest thing since sliced vagina.

And I agree Howard was funny a long time ago. You need to know when to punch out Maverick.

I wish Opie and Anthony would move to an afternoon slot on Sirius. Then I would have the best of both worlds.

I listened to Stern in the mid 90’s and loved every minute of it. He had some great content back in those days. I tried to give him a chance a couple of years ago but grew tired of the complaining and the constant “they stole that bit from me” rhetoric.

O&A party ROCK!

Carlo’s take on this couldn’t be more wrong if he was trying:

1. How is this a good move for XM? They are losing exclusivity on one of their supposed gems. The entire sales pitch for sattelite radio is exclusinve content. No way they are getting enough money to cover this. XM shareholders will have heads rolling with this move.

2. This move is not a slap at Stern, it’s a desperate ploy admitting defeat. The f’d up letting Stern go, they f’d up with his replacements, might as well go for strike 3 by admitting…

3. Their lawsuit against Stern is complete bs. They are now going to allow O&A to do explicitly (plug XM) what they allowed Stern to do implicitly (plug Sirius). How bad do you think their radio division is doing for them to eat crow like this? Sounds like Hollander’s (and Moonves) back and job are against the wall.

Think about how they screwed up the most profitable radio gig in history. Think about how they went about deciding on Stern’s replacements. Do any of you have an idea of how much audience walked away when Howard did? Ratings show that Roth kept less than 10% of Stern’s audience, do you know how impossible that is? I think with people too lazy/stupid to change the station he would have been able to keep more than that, but no.

Bad moves by bad executives. This is a lose-lose deal for XM and CBS.

As for current ratings, there is not an advertiser alive who thinks more people listen to O&A instead of Stern, to suggest that is beyond laughable.

Everybody who thinks every single person who has joined Sirius since January is a Howard Stern listener is a moron. Ever think it might be, “Hey, Christmas time. I’m gonna buy a Sirius subscription for so and so.” So, the stat of saying all 3 million are listening to Stern is ludicrous.

People saying its a bad move because people can get the same thing for free now obviously didn’t do much research. There is still 2 extra hours AND its uncensored the whole time. The things they got away with on public radio, while not as good as XM stuff, was still pretty darn good. Granted, they will tone it down a little because some subjects just can’t be discussed, but knowing O&A, they’ll push it to the limits. Stern may have been the first shock jock, but that doesn’t mean everybody who is nowadays is ripping him off. He’s old and bitchy these days and completely full of himself. O&A actually include listeners as much as possible. They connect with them on a level Stern doesn’t. Stern thinks he’s above his listeners, whereas O&A does not. They’re also much more creative then Stern these days as well. Stern is just riding on reputation and not trying anymore.

Stern fans are morons for the most part when they think that nobody can be better him simply because he’s Stern. O&A offers just as much entertainment as Stern these days. They’re much more in sync with their listeners. At this point, i’d say O&A is arguably (keyword) better than Stern. That’s better than people on the other side of this debate saying “O&A can’t stand a chance against Stern.” Whenever you ask those kind of people why, they just respond with bull like “every person who now signs up for sirius, its because of stern.” they may not word it that way, but thats what is implied when you give the stat “3 million people have joined since january and are therefore stern listeners.” i wonder what kind of numbers we’d get if we count how many people joined xm since o&a went there.

Paul are you nicknamed a famous serial killer from Beantown?

stay in the dark neverender…you’re fighting a losing battle son.

Hoo Hoo

“XM has over 6.5 million subscribers, 9 million by the end of the year.

Sirius has over 4 million subscribers, 6 million by the end of the year. ”

Dan, when XM barely makes it to 8 million by the end of the year and their stock is at $10 please remember to come back here and apologize. I’ll give you my personal email if you want to send me a formal apology.

If you saw the first quarter subs you would realize that there is now way in hell XM can get to 9 million this year. Impossible without some major “Howard-like” attraction. Got any ideas, I’m sure XM is all ears.

This is a bad deal only in the wishes of Howard Stern’s diminishing and aging fanbase. The fans are going to get an extra hour (at least) of the show everyday. XM subscribers will get the uncensored feed for the first 3 hours and then two hours of exclusive broadcast. CBS gets content and XM gets plugs. The only loser in this is Stern, because the 90% of his audience who didn’t subscribe to Sirius are by definition casual listeners and will LOVE to have an entertaining show to listen to for free and will be more likely to go with XM to hear the dirty stuff should they decide to get satellite. In the meantime, O&A have a LOT of dirt on Howard, and little by little will chip away at his credibility until his old audience will look at him as the washed up hack he is.

sjg – nice predictions…in your dreams.

Do you even know sirius stock is hovering at 5 bucks while xm is around 23.

Xm stock is projected to increase by 30% while sirius is projected to increase by 8%…check it out moron. Do some reading for facts instead of making them up.

When will Hoo hang up that wig its over you loose.