Howard Stern is a funny guy. I am glad I got Sirius radio.

Congratulations.

Every time I read your blog you sound like you want Sirius to fail.
From what I’ve read you can’t even buy a Sirius receiver nowadays because they are always sold out. All that’s left are earlier models
that few want. You can diss the S50 but Howard showed it on Larry
King’s show. The S50 is sold out all across America, new ones are
backordered. People are breaking down doors to Best Buy and Circuit City as their only hope of getting a reprieve from lame David Lee Roth.
They should have around 4 million customers pretty soon, and that’s up from 600,000 in October 2004.

1. The S50 is a piece of crap that can’t even play live radio.
2. People are not breaking down doors to buy Sirius units.
3. If your numbers are correct, and I won’t doubt they are, they’ve added 2.4 million subscribers since October 2004. XM has more than doubled its numbers from 2.5 million (where they were around that time) to 6 million.
4. We won’t even get into the silly system that sirius uses to determine its subscriber numbers, either. I particularly like The Street’s article about their fishy system for determining who a subscriber is:

XM and Sirius both count on arrangements with big automakers like Ford (F:NYSE - news - research - Cramer’s Take) and GM (GM:NYSE - news - research - Cramer’s Take) to power subscriber gains. But where XM waits until a car buyer activates the service to add to its new-user tally, Sirius sometimes starts counting as soon as a car with a factory-installed radio arrives at the dealership.

So a number of those freshly minted Sirius subscribers could actually be Chrysler Concordes sitting on a dealer’s lot somewhere. Observers say that kind of liberal math could be bolstering Sirius’ growth — especially now, as dealers are receiving a new crop of 2006 models.

Sirius’ practice means the company can “call it a sub, even if it is sitting under water on a dealer’s lot in New Orleans,” says one investor who sold Sirius and holds XM.

Most of those “subscribers” probably never even turned on their receivers.

Sirius has been so busy signing up new customers they probably didn’t have time for the electronics show.

That’s a load of crap, and you know it. They had nothing to show. If they held the S50 up to Pioneer’s Inno or Samsung Helix (which won the Best in the Show award from the people who run CES), people would’ve fell on the floor laughing. Who wants a “radio” that doesn’t actually play live radio? XM has at least 4 models that do the very same thing! Sirius? None. Not one truly portable unit. You have to “record your radio” to listen to it on the road unless you install one of the other units in your car.

Please.

listened to Bubba the Love Sponge and he says a lot of bad words, but
that’s what customers want these days, I guess.

Just like Hoo Hoo Howie’s show, only substitute strippers and porn stars for bad words.

XM and Sirius are pretty much like Coke and Pepsi. But Sirius has the
NFL and NBA/NHL, as well as Stern, the King of all Media and that’s why
Sirius has been inundated with new customers of late. I can’t comment
on Opie and Anthony because I never heard their show, but they are
probably funny too.

They are not “inundated” with anything. They haven’t made anywhere near the money needed to pay Howard’s $500m contract and $200m in stock yet. Sirius has the NFL and NBA/NHL. Well, XM has Major League Baseball and the NHL, and in two years, XM will have exclusivity on the NHL. And let’s face it, the King of All Media moniker is tired, old, and overused. Kinda like his jokes.

I mean, his big moment was playing the Pat O’Brien Sex tapes on the air, while claiming it was “the first time they have ever been played uncensored on radio.”

Except it wasn’t. Not even close. O&A did it more than a year ago and got plenty of buzz in the press over it. The King lied.

Sirius’s newfound business has helped the economy. Sat radio is the
new wave.

Satellite? Sure is. Sirius? Not that mismanaged trash can throwing money at people like Stern and Bubba (who Stern has verbally assaulted so often it’s hysterical).

Illinois Ed

Thanks for writing. I would encourage you to learn a lot more about the business before becoming a shill for Sirius.

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