Who are you trying to convince? Me, or you.

XM=3 million subs

Sirius=1 million subs

(DirecTV has 14 million subs and still loses money, while DiSH has
almost 10 and pays quarterly dividends. Go figure.)

What if you're a Saints fan and not within range of WWL?

The audio quality can be fairly sucky, but not usually.

Where I live, I have a choice between AM hate radio, the Cal State
Northridge too-poor-for-NPR station on FM, weak HF (inless you want to
listen to Japan, Korea or China the shortwave here is very DXer grade
at best), or 220 channels of crystal clear satellite radio.

If you listen to HF Broadcast for the content, Sirius has WRN 24/7.

On Wed, 22 Dec 2004 19:59:25 -0600, "Stinger"
wrote:


"David" wrote in message
.. .
This is why Satellite Radio is the wave of the future.




David, so far it looks like the satellite radio business model is still
rather shaky.

XM has over 1,000,000 subscribers -- they're still not profitable.

Sirius is bleeding even more cash and has just over 600,000 subscribers.
They're betting people will subscribe to hear Howard Stern or the NFL, both
of which they have signed for big dollars. Stern may be able to bring some
people in, but the size of his salary will continue to make it tough to
climb out of the red.

The NFL choice doesn't make sense to me -- most people will want to listen
to the slant from their local stations for free. Here in the New Orleans
area, we like to listen to WWL radio while we watch the games on TV, just
for the local flavor. It can be hilarious -- after all, it is the Saints.

The "digital" part is misleading as well. The quality (kbs) is not up to CD
standards at all -- it's more like medium-quality MP3's. Most home-audio
people won't be happy with that, either. This will have to improve, but
250+ kbs streaming audio is already available on the net for free.

-- Stinger