Possibly…

We’ll never know for sure, but Orbitcast has an interesting graph with an interesting accompanying point. The chart is as follows:

Orbitcast’s point is as follows:

An interesting coincidence to say the least. Now this isn’t necessarily translating to XM subscribers either. In the week following Thanksgiving, Bridge estimates that 15% of respondents were Stern motivated subscribers, compared to a mere 3% of Opie and Anthony motivated subscribers.

But the fact that new nationally syndicated “shock jock” talent is now available on terrestrial radio has most likely caused many listeners to reconsider a satellite radio subscription. This could also be why satellite radio has dropped off the map as being a “hot item” of the Holiday season.

The fact is, prior to Stern migrating to Sirius there was absolutely no non-political morning drive talent on the air. When Stern left, the vaccum of poor on-air personalities undoubted drove a portion of the audience to seek an alternative - even if they had to pay for it. But with a free alternative readily available, there’s no impending reason to leave anymore.

Food for thought.

Indeed. If you couple it with the fact that Stern’s numbers went down by 9/10ths in 4 months, I’d say it’s easy to point out that the Stern effect isn’t all it’s cracked up to be, and that people were mostly listening to him because he was there, not because they loved him. Estimates place Sirius subscriptions for Stern’s audience at around 13%. Not exactly following him in droves. As most people outside of Sirius’ New York office predicted, the hardcores followed him and the casual fan moved on to something else.

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