"Rich Wood" wrote in message
...
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'm not sure I agree with your count, Rich. I'm not disputing the subscriber number,
but isn't it fair to say that anyone listening to any Sirius or XM program ISN'T
listening to coventional radio. Thus, there's radio listening, and not-radio
listening (XM and Sirius). Point being that it's of no particular significance as to
WHAT program is being listened to, just that it's not radio. And using that
criteria, 3 million subscribers equates to more than 1% of the U-S population - even
more when considering only those who use radio. Isn't it fair to say that this,
assumed to be uniformly distributed, also means that Sirius and XM (assuming all
subscribers are listening at once...a big assumption, certainly) would be similar to
an in-market radio station with a 1 share, a level that many stations in
densely-served markets would consider to be a success? If this share grows by just
one order of magnitude, it's going to start hurting traditional broadcasting.

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.

But Sirius' and XM's business model doesn't require advertisers....it's subscription,
and the subscription model is more efficient than the advertiser-supported model (as
XM seems to have found out). We don't got to show you any stinkin' ad agencies, and
could care less what numbers they're looking for!

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.

Except, you've noted, when you listen to NPR. And NPR's programming on Sirius does
do underwriting announcements, too, you know. Not exactly being deluged with
advertising matter, true, but it's still a far cry from being an advertiser-free
zone. So considering how desireable NPR listeners are, it might just be the bleeding
edge on where satellite "advertising" dollars starts seeping to.
--
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Rich