This is important...

[Demian]

Siriuslyscrewed.com is planning a massive cancellation on Dec. 17th in protest if their demands are not responded to...

http://www.siriuslyscrewed.com/

"As our final remedy we are asking Sirius and XM subscribers to CANCEL all subscriptions on Wednesday, December 17th to let the company know we are serious about protecting this once fantastic entertainment medium."

[SiriusBuzz]

People will say that they will cancel but IMO the majority of the subscribers on that site will not pull the trigger. How many people do you think that site could get on board? I would imagine that 1k would be a ton and if SiriusXM loses 1k subscribers this time of year no one will notice.

[Demian]

As upset as I am about the channel and programming changes, I think that you are probably right about that. My fear is that a lot of the passionate fans are now less passionate - which hurts word of mouth grassroots marketing. Lee Abram's philosophy at XM was one of wanting fans and not just listeners. My fear is that there are now less fans and more listeners after the recent channel "consolidation." The efforts to appeal to the mainstream have had costs in niche programming. I'm a big fan of Lee Abram's philosophy at XM of appealing to the masses by appealing to the individual groups separately. Sometimes trying to make everyone happy makes no one really happy - except the elusive "mainstream" listener...

You can see a video of Lee Abrams explaining his philosophy on XM's diversity on his website. The video in on the upper right of the page. It's entitled - "Lee Abrams on XM Diversity".....

http://leeabrams.blogspot.com/

[Demian]

Here is the response that I finally got back from XM regarding my emailed concerns. I requested that someone call me back also, but I have not heard back from anyone in programming yet. They tell me to call Listener Care in India?

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Thank you for contacting XM.

We apologize for the delay in responding to your email and we for the inconvenience caused by our recent programme modifications. We appreciate all of our subscriber’s comments and suggestions. We understand your concern in this matter. We have forwarded your suggestion onto our Programming Department. However, at the current time no updates are planned. In the future you can contact XM’s Programming Department directly at programming@xmradio.com. Thank you for being a loyal listener and we look forward to many more years of providing you with our service.

If we can be of further assistance, please feel free to send an additional email or you may contact a Listener Care Representative directly at 1-800-XM RADIO (800-967-2346). Our Listener Care Center's hours of operation are as follows:

Monday - Saturday: 8 AM - 11 PM ET
Sunday: 8 AM - 8 PM ET


Thank you,
Nadia

[DScum]

People will say that they will cancel but IMO the majority of the subscribers on that site will not pull the trigger. How many people do you think that site could get on board? I would imagine that 1k would be a ton and if SiriusXM loses 1k subscribers this time of year no one will notice.

It's not just about losing customers it is about losing subscribers. SiriusXM has had the benefit of adding cars sitting in lots into their "new subscriber" growth for years. With the loss of those numbers they will need to show a stronger retail growth.

They already lowered projected growth once for 4Q. Do you realize what happens if they miss an already lowered projection? The market will ravage them and the stock could face being taken off the NASDAQ.

Call the call center and talk the CSR's or Supervisors they will tell you thousands have already canceled, they will tell you how many hundreds of thousands of dollars of free placating months have been given away.

A company like SiriusXM can't afford to lose ANY customers, it was forced to lay people of, it was forced to shrink it's marketing budget. Hell they apparently can't hire anybody to fix the "censorship glitch". This company ain't exactly rolling in it and pissing off and losing 1K customers on top of thousands already lost isn't going to change that. It is only going to exacerbate the situation further.

[SiriusBuzz]

When I say customers, I mean subscribers, what else could a customer of satellite radio be?

I have to respectfully disagree, losing 1k subscribers is not going to make a damn bit of difference. That being said, I think you might see 5-10 people on this site actually make the move.

Losing 10k subscribers should not slow Sirius XM down in the slightest and if they were doing a half way decent job marketing they would be adding 10 new subscribers for every asshole who cancels their subscription to "prove a point."

[DScum]

When I say customers, I mean subscribers, what else could a customer of satellite radio be?

I have to respectfully disagree, losing 1k subscribers is not going to make a damn bit of difference. That being said, I think you might see 5-10 people on this site actually make the move.

Losing 10k subscribers should not slow Sirius XM down in the slightest and if they were doing a half way decent job marketing they would be adding 10 new subscribers for every asshole who cancels their subscription to "prove a point."

My point is the semantics regarding subscribers vs. customers.

SiriusXM touts they have 19 million subscribers. This does not equate to 19 million customers using the service. Of that 19 million many are activated units sitting in unowned vehicles, others are multiple radio accounts. I account for 3 subscriptions but I am only 1 customer.

So when you say 1K which I think is a low estimate are you accounting for people with multiple subs? Remember they count subscribers not customers.

Now let's discuss adding those new subs. Sirius and XM have played this game for years to pad their stats. Shadow accounts for new vehicles when a new vehicle enters a retail auto lot it's satrad is activated. This is listed as a sub, yet it does not pay subscription rates to the company. With fewer vehicles rolling off assembly lines and onto car lots you can look for this loss of padding to make an impact. The estimated churn of these shadow accounts is 50k-200k per fiscal quarter.

Now the retail growth. Which according to people in the know is sluggish.

So with lower growth anticipated in the auto churn and lower growth in the retail sector SiriusXM already lowering their projection to 200k (prior to the automaker turmoil) you don't think 10k subs would make that much of an impact? It's going to be hard enough for the company to make the 200k.

Falling short of an expectation isn't a death knell but it certainly doesn't help a company who is bleeding money and at risk of being thrown off the NASDAQ.

[SiriusBuzz]

I bet 5 customers cancel and Sirius XM loses MAYBE 8 subscriptions because of that website.

IF Sirius did their homework (and I assume they did) the channel lineup change should bring more subs or at least stop churn more so then the number of subscriptions they lose from disgruntled listeners.

[DScum]

I bet 5 customers cancel and Sirius XM loses MAYBE 8 subscriptions because of that website.

IF Sirius did their homework (and I assume they did) the channel lineup change should bring more subs or at least stop churn more so then the number of subscriptions they lose from disgruntled listeners.

I disagree.

They rolled the dice. Cost savings vs. loss of profit.

They tried to please everyone from Sirius and XM and only managed to alienate and piss off the majority.

The truth of the matter is neither of us will know exactly how many people cancel because of www.siriuslyscrewed.com

What we do know is that you can only push subscribers so far before they push back.

[SiriusBuzz]

I guess we will have to agree to disagree here.

All I know is that they didn't cut their most popular channels. You can't argue that.