Sale, clearance, half-price: satellite radio in Canada
Posted on Sunday, November 22nd, 2009 at 4:42am. #
It doesn’t matter whether it’s XM or Sirius, this display, seen the other day in a store in Toronto, would seem to show the end of paid-for radio.
In this store, there was not a single unit retailing at the normal ticket price. And this store had little else on sale. If the death rites aren’t beginning to be read on the merged company these companies already, they soon will be.
XM and Sirius do fill a genuine need for North Americans (big-name broadcasters, commercial-free music, national coverage). But even then, it would appear that its days are numbered.
(If you’re interested, XM Radio in Canada carries a monthly cost of between £7.30 to £8.50, in addition to an activation fee.)
[Correction: XM and Sirius may have merged in the USA, but haven't done so in Canada.]
Quite honestly, their days were numbered as soon as the two companies merged.
Extra charges for additional radios, extra charges to listen online, dilution of programming (including the loss of Air America, leaving 1 left-leaning talk channel to 2 conservative; one of which was rather insultingly called “Patriot”) and the pouring of millions into the “Sirius Backseat TV” bandwidth hog – all for 3 channels? Keep it. You could buy TWO portable DVD players for what SBTV costs, and the monthlies would pay for Netflix. Even if you drag your kids on 3-hour journeys every single day, why even bother when there’s a better, and more varied, alternative?
What they need to do is concentrate on the music channels being purely music. They don’t need jocks on them AT ALL. Is it sort of twee and interesting that they have the reassembled mid-80s KROQ line-up for their New Wave channel? Sort of, but Joe Schmoe in Idaho doesn’t give a toss. Is it great that they’ve reassembled the original MTV line-up on their 80s channel? For ten minutes, yes. Then, when it’s glaringly obvious that the shows are voicetracked – probably days in advance – and that they don’t really care about the music or the audience, it loses its sparkle. Martha Quinn saying “I love this Fleetwood Mac song” doesn’t make the song any better, or add any value to it.
Maybe the company can survive if it concentrates on what ILR can’t do; niche. Niche music, nice sports and niche talk programming. They need to lose all their music jocks and ditch the silly traffic channels. It needs to identify what it can offer that ipods can’t, because the only time I listen to the one radio I have left activated (I used to maintain THREE) is when I’m driving and there’s breaking news, I have forgotten my ipod, or I’ve caught up on all the podcasts I subscribe to. It needs to leave personality radio and local content to ILR and brand itself with a national identity.
If they can push the niche angle, offer live sport and make sure it’s accessible online (even on my Stiletto, I had a scaled-down channel package once I switched to wi-fi), maybe it can survive. Maybe.