On 11 Aug 2004 06:11:29 GMT, (Sam Byrams)
wrote:

One can only hope that XMSirius (yeah, they'll merge, eight to five by
2006)will kill the market value of local stations so that people who
want to do radio can afford to buy them.

Ain't gonna happen. Even if XM and SIRIUS merge, they'll have only a
fraction of the audience of terrestrial radio. The current subscriber
count is less than 3 million and that's spread over 200+ channels.

I believe it'll be many years before satellite radio becomes a
significant threat to radio. It'll take even longer before ad agencies
get the kind of numbers from the channels that accept advertising.
Agencies have to buy on environment rather than buying buy the
numbers, as they're used to doing.

I have both XM and SIRIUS. I generally listen to Classical, Jazz,
Oldies and a few other non-commercial channels. That means I'm
unreachable by advertisers.

Rich