DISQUS

Daniel J. Pritchett · 10 months ago

I always wanted satellite radio but I never felt I spent enough time in the car to justify the cost. I drive maybe 6-7 hours a week.

Louis, how hard would it be for you to use your iPhone as a car radio to play Pandora or maybe a streaming MP3 station like say Digitally Imported? The unlimited data plan has lots of possibilities, and you're not paying an extra fee to Sirius.

Louis Gray · 10 months ago

Daniel, assuming the next car has a line-in, it wouldn't be too rough to play my own music as I drove. But I'm less sure about Pandora. Typically, connections, even on 3G, aren't so good when you're on the move. If I had WiFi in my car (which I'm not getting for a while still), that'd be a different story.

Daniel J. Pritchett · 10 months ago

Thanks for the 3G usability anecdote - I've only ever used it on other
peoples' phones so I had no idea.

ontarioemperor · 10 months ago

Daniel, I have a - well, to spare Louis' sensibilities, let's just say I have an older phone - and I have been known to turn the speaker on and surf to di.fm and listen to music. Of course, such a solution assumes that di.fm, and Pandora, and last.fm continue to exist. What happens if Sirius/XM dies because of the competition from last.fm, Pandora, et al...and then the competition dies also? (Sorry for the negative tone, but I've been more pessimistic than usual lately.)

phil barrett · 10 months ago

internet radio will kill satellite radio. i blogged about it a few weeks ago...
http://www.burningthebacon.com/2009/01/06/inter...

Roger Kondrat · 10 months ago

Their product is still excellent and compelling they just raised debt that they are likely unable to refinance in this market and so bankruptcy is now the only way they can restructure their debt. Often companies re-raise debt to finance/buy-out older higher interest rate debts at better rates as their risk profile diminishes but if they can't raise debt because the market won't let them e.g. the banking sector collapsing, then they are screwed

I don't think this says much negative about them as it does about the marketplace they now find themselves in.

Louis Gray · 10 months ago

In my limited exposure to their product, it has been great, and every time I go online window shopping, I've configured the car to have the premium Sirius package. I recognize the confluence of events around the company in terms of its debt, and bankruptcy route, but it could mean you see the product under a different brand name, or with different content. The marketplace is bad, and the strategy was bad, even if the product is outstanding.

Roger Kondrat · 10 months ago

I can't say I disagree with you Louis. They have definitely made some missteps and their strategy I felt seemed to stagnate once they began focusing on getting approval for the merger of Sirius and XM.

Will they come back as a different brand? I don't know, a bankruptcy route shouldn't affect that but re-aligning their strategy might. I agree with you that their content will be dramatically impacted, this has always been the case before why would that change in the future.

I wonder though if bankruptcy wasn't inevitable, perhaps they need it to restructure enough of their debt so they can take risks again particularly on the content side.

Could you agree of late their strategy on content differed from the early launch days when they tried everything and only cutting content based on poor performance where as later on they tended to consolidate shows based purely on cost efficiencies.

They need to become flexible again and continue to test and explore their role in the radio market as premium providers.


Cheers

Roger

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Alberto · 10 months ago

This means I can't listen to obscure sports broadcasts while I rent cars across the country. This is truly a sad day for me. I know, maybe be can socialized it like everything else!

ontarioemperor · 10 months ago

Louis,

Forget about the content of this post - the title of this post is one of the best titles I've seen in a while.

I live in the Inland Empire of California, a suburb/exurb east of Los Angeles. We have a lot of warehouses in this area, and while I don't know the occupancy rate, I'd be willing to bet it's fairly low. I wonder if the economics of the current warehouse vacancy make the reintroduction of a grocery delivery service more attractive? At present, fuel prices are lower than they've been in years - although I'll grant that fuel prices are very volatile, and we could conceivably be looking at $4+ gasoline prices this summer, which would lessen the profitability of a grocery delivery service somewhat.

And regarding the inaccuracy of your prediction about Sirius' viability - I'm wrong all the time. Welcome to the World of the Bad Prognosticators. :)

Craig · 10 months ago

What do you think the future of Satellite radio will be then? They still have Stern to a $500 Million dollar deal. I'm thinking about getting it installed in my car now, but have to rethink that decision.