It doesn't hurt to have better content that appeals to more people though.....does it?Quote:
Originally Posted by jmm232
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It doesn't hurt to have better content that appeals to more people though.....does it?Quote:
Originally Posted by jmm232
Unfortunately, SIRI might have to focus on the masses right now. When the cash is flowing, then they can revisit the less "popular" programming.
The layoffs and channel removals might cause say 20,000 people to cancel.
But if the money saved can be used in advertising to get 40,000 new subs, that might be worth it. Then when the company is well in the black, niche programming becomes worth it just to get every last person they can.
You understand that the masses are made up of lots of different kinds of people and interests, right? There is no way for Sirius management to really know for certain what channels are more "popular" from just their internet streaming platform tracking software and the same "market research" that destroyed terrestrial radio. Beyond Jazz is my favorite channel and I never listen to it online - because the XM online compression sounds crummy. There is plenty of bandwidth to represent every genre and style without insulting and alienating them.Quote:
Originally Posted by spanyo
It's more than this though. Sirius is losing it's STREET CRED by getting rid of Beyond Jazz and the Punk channel. Never underestimate how important that street cred is in grassroots marketing. These people are the wrong people to piss off.......
Remember that same philosophy of trying to appeal to the masses is what destroyed terrestrial radio and popular music...
Demian, I hear what you are saying... I would imagine that Sirius must have some way of making an educated guess about what is more popular.
Have you had a chance to listen to Sirius' jazz offerings? One of them could be replacing Beyond Jazz. I know many seem to prefer the XM music offerings, but we don't know for sure what could arise. Just because the name, programmer, and channel number change doesn't mean the music will.
As far as terrestrial radio goes, I think greed and laziness had a big hand in killing it too.
Anyway, until the chips fall, there is no way to know where they will end up.
Street cred won't be worth much to me if the shareholders get wiped out.
Demain,
I admire youre passion. I am not disagreeing with you. You have the following Jazz stations right now
Sirius: Jazz Cafe
Sirius: Pure Jazz
XM: Real Jazz
XM: Watercolors
XM: Beyond Jazz
To be honest with you, it looks like the overlap is more with Classic and Contemporary Jazz and not Modern Jazz.
I would expect Real Jazz and Pure Jazz to merge
I would expect Watercolors and Jazz Cafe to merge.
It appears to me that Beyond Jazz has no counterpart, which is a shame.
That is simply what I was getting at. Original content should remain. It is the overlap that needs to go.
My mom has had some email correspondence with XM'S POTUS program director and host Scott Walterman - who was just fired, along with the rest of the POTUS staff.
Here is the letter my mom wrote to Scott Walterman and his email response back to her.......
Subject: Leaving Potus 08??? No!!!!!
Date: Thu, 6 Nov 2008 21:42:
Dear Mr. Walterman,
My son, who lives in California, just called me this evening with Bad News. He told me that you are leaving XM radio, that the entire Potus ‘08 staff is being let go! I cannot fathom this. I have been listening to you and your colleagues since my son told me about Potus ‘08 several months ago. I have thoroughly enjoyed your unfiltered and insightful political news. Actually, I have become a Potus ’08 addict! I commute about 2 hours a day to my job as a psychiatric nurse. You have been my constant companion and have made the drive so interesting that sometimes when I arrive home after a 10 hour + day, I still sit in my car in the driveway to hear the end of an interesting segment. I credit you and your cool radio station with arming me with credible facts, fodder for intelligent conversations with co-workers and friends throughout this election cycle. Nowhere else can I find this accurate reporting without the annoyance of advertisements. I feel very sad, actually depressed to think that you and my other Potus ‘08 friends will not be riding to work with me in the mornings. Where will I get my reliable information? I am MAD about this. I plan to contact your XM Customer Service to complain bitterly. Is there anything else my son and I can do to keep this significant loss of responsible journalism from fading away at such an important time? Please advise and please accept my gratitude and thanks for amazing election season reporting in this, the most extraordinary election season of my lifetime.
Thank you so much for your contribution to all of us, listeners and fans of Potus ’08,
Patricia
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------
From: Scott Walterman [mailto:scott@scottwalterman.com]
Sent: Saturday, November 08, 2008 6:13 AM
Subject: RE: Leaving Potus 08??? No!!!!!!!!
Patricia,
Thank you so much. First, let me say that there is no turning the new management around and we are not asking for people to do so. I don't understand their decision, but it is their decision.
Secondly, and much more importantly - thank you so much for your kind words and for being along for a great ride this year. I've loved being on the air at XM and am more proud of having been able to design and bring to life POTUS than anything else in my career.
I did it for you and the other listeners - under the theory that you are smart and want something smart. It's that simple. And your email makes my day - it's a validation that I was right and all the 20 hour days and all the fights with the old managment to keep the vision pure and all the other bad things just melt away.
It was a good run - we are all happy - please be well.
scott
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
So the idiots at Sirius management are gutting my moms favorite channel and axing my favorite channel, Beyond Jazz. What a bunch of idiots. I lose all my money in the stock and then they take away me and my moms favorite programming! I sent an Inno to friend of mine (he is in his 50's) as a gift and he sent it back to me when they cancelled the punk channel. He said it was the only channel he really wanted it for. It was also the only channel that played SKA music and modern electric surf music...
My mom tells me she wants to cancel her XM subscription...
Why is Sirius management doing this to me, my mom, and my friend?
Words cannot describe how angry and disgusted I am with Sirius management right now...........
Potus will remain. If it begins to stink your mother should cancel. But I hope she will at least give the new crew a chance. Change is often difficult, but not always bad.
Your mother may also enjoy one or more new channels:
119 Doctor Radio
134 NPR Now
135 World Radio Network
Potus isn't going to have a new crew, it's just going to be rebroadcasts of podcasts, c-span, and other news feeds...Quote:
Originally Posted by spanyo
The last thing my mom wants to listen to on her way to work as a nurse is Doctor radio.
She can get her local NPR station on regular radio for free.
World Radio network? She doesn't speak or understand any languages other than english...
Just trying... I didn't bother to actually see what World Radio network was...oops.
Is that definite about Potus? I would imagine that now the election is over, the programming wouldn't be quite as compelling anymore. It's a little like listening to a baseball talk show after the world series is over. Yes politics continue year round, but even CNN, MSNBC, and Fox are going to have lower ratings now. There are political junkies that would be depressed even if Potus stayed unchanged.
Well lets hope that the changes affect the bottom line and stock price enough to make your subs seem like pocket change. (sigh)
I hope the future will bring you and your mom some compelling listening. But vote your displeasure how you see fit.
Thanks Spanyo,
I know you are just trying to help and think positive...
It has been one thing for me to lose all my money in this stock, but now it is something different to have my mom's, my friend's, and my favorite programming being taken away - with no replacement!
I am having a really hard time defending Sirius management ....
Demian, I hope your stock losses are unrealized. I'm down almost 90% myself. What gets me through is the strong belief that eventually we will look back, and this current nightmare will be a distant memory. I really think there is going to be a happy ending here. Unfortunately the trick to this company is that there is no trick. It will be successful only after hard work, hard choices, and patience.
I have a feeling the tone on these forums will be noticeably more positive a year or two from now. Time will tell.
Keep up your hard work, but give yourself some much deserved rest from time to time.
I realize the losses whenever I log into my brokerage account and see my dwindling account value.....:(Quote:
Originally Posted by spanyo
Another subscriber that was subscribing for POTUS.....
http://technologizer.com/2008/11/08/...tworks-or-one/
"I’ve been a happy XM subscriber for years. But my iPhone 3G is such a slick source of streaming music–thanks to apps such as Pandora and Tuner–that I keep flirting with canceling my XM subscription and simply pumping the iPhone’s audio through my car stereo. It’s mostly XM’s......news stations such as POTUS which have kept me on board."
It looks like Sirius management has gotten to Scott Walterman somehow. He has removed all of the information about his and the rest of the POTUS staff firings from his website - that I had copied and pasted at the beginning of this thread. I wonder what the reason is? Did Sirius management threaten him for disclosing that information? Was he not suppose to disclose that information? Did they pay him off to take that info down? Are they considering keeping him? Did enough people email and complain about his and all of the POTUS staff firings? Who knows?
http://scottwalterman.com
Now Sirius management is pissing off the truckers by removing programming for truckers...
http://www.mountainhomenews.com/blogs/1266/entry/22021/
Stupidity kicked my butt and it hurt bad
Posted Monday, November 10, 2008, at 4:31 AM
".......the vast majority of the overnight trucker style radio networks and shows pretty much died. Its worse now that both XM and Sirius merged."
How's the Sirius management doing with Sirius/XM's street cred? Not good...
Now they have got the punks out there slamming satellite radio. That's not good for grassroots marketing and making satellite radio cool. Alienate all of the punks, the truckers, and the modern/fusion/acid jazz crowd? These are the wrong people to piss off and they are hard to win back once you lose them. Not good for your street cred and image - and it's hard to get your street cred back once you lose it! Take a page from Apple and learn how to get some ****ing street cred!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xu5Z4yCaRSc
Comments
ladyrebelgrrl
Cancel your subscriptions XM officially sucks.
RIP-FUNGUS 53
deluxehandyman
punk is dead thanks xm now go **** off and die
ZogxUNB0UNDx
it got replaced with a station that plays literally nothing but ac/dc at all times. what a load of shit.
se712808
Hell ****in yes, great job! I'm on my 3 month freebie (suckin w/o fungus) xm gave me when I said I wanted to cancel all 3 of my xm accounts when I found out fungus was gone. If fungus ain't back, in Jan as promised, no mo xm fo me
In the CC Mel was saying how great and better the new channel lineup was going to be for it's subscribers....
Not if your favorite channels are Beyond Jazz, Fungus, POTUS, and others that they are cutting or gutting. Does management really think that people wanting to tune into a 24 hour AC/DC channel are going to make up for all of the subscribers that they will lose by axing whole genres of music? Does management care about losing these people to Slacker and internet radio?
Rule #1 in a subscription business, and in this present economy, is to keep the subscribers you have! Your more likely to get new subscribers by focusing on keeping the ones you have happy. Now is not the time to be risking losing the subscribers you have...
This is a major corporate blunder......
Here is the new XM program list.......
I don't see Beyond Jazz, Fungus, or Fine Tuning listed...
http://www.orbitcast.com/archives/NE...M_LINEUP-1.pdf
From my understanding, XM mostly used their online platform to gauge what people were listening to. This would not be accurate as many that would listen to Beyond Jazz, including me, would not be listening to it online because of the crummy compression bit rate. I think it's a big mistake for management to get rid of genre channels that are more likely to have listeners that only subscribe for that channel/genre alone - like Fungus and Beyond Jazz.
Are there really that many people subscribing just for the AC/DC channel or Hair Nation - the 80's hair band channel? How many people would cancel if they got rid of just one single artist channel, or just one country or classic rock channel - compared to how many people would cancel if they got rid of the whole genre of music that those people subscribed for in the first place?
It's not just how many listeners the channel has - it's how many of those listeners would cancel if that programming was taken away. This is an important distinction.
Reading the posts around the internet, it's obvious that many of the listeners of Beyond Jazz and Fungus would fall into the category of being more likely to cancel - not to mention the loss of street cred to Sirius/XM by alienating these important influential demographics in music circles which are so important to grassroots marketing initiatives...
I agree with Spanyo on this one.
In a situation like this, no matter what is getting the ax, it's always going to be someone's favorite programming, and they are going to be pissed off, and they are going to be vocal about it. As a consumer it is their right and their choice to cancel their subscription.
Satellite radio burst onto the scene and underwent rapid growth on the premise of exclusivity, whether it be programmers, or niche genres. However, its not hard to see looking at subscriber additions that the rate of adoption has slowed dramatically. For all intents and purposes, they have exhausted that consumer base, and it's pretty evident that these adoption rates simply could not sustain the industry as it was currently structured. If your house is on fire and you are crawling out at a snails pace instead of sprinting, don't be suprised when your pants catch fire.
The merger and cost cutting will certainly help, but fundamental changes have to occur in the way that satellite radio adds value to consumers, so that they can attract a larger consumer base. So they are going through growing pains right now. As they work through the merger consolidation, and continue integration in the coming years, they have to find a way to reach out to new consumers. Yes, getting in dashboard deals is certainly half the battle, but the other half is offering something compelling that is going to make the largest amount of people stick around and want to pay for it.
Until the company can get their legs under the feet, and get out of the red, they may from time to time need to abandon a certain aspect of their business that appeals to the current subscriber base. I do not see niche channels disappearing completely, they have ample programming space, and without a doubt offering different programming from the same crap we hear on FM is "value added". But from a business perspective, as nice as niche channels are for the punk fans, if its not paying the bills, its shouldn't priority one. And this doesn't all point to the terrestrialization of satellite radio. But IMO you are going to catch more subscribers by differentiating yourself through deeper playlists and special programming relating to the more POPULAR musical genres.
Facts are facts, less people listen to punk music than rock. And while I don't doubt that Beyond Jazz has a appreciative fan base, as hard as this might be to believe, there are other people who dont' care for it, or are indifferent between it and the other Jazz alternatives.
You simply can't please everyone. If two thousand punks get fed up with "the man" and cancel their subscription, but in their place five thousand people find the new programming or service offered worthwhile, its simple math.
Being "cool" on the street doesn't mean a thing when you can't sustain a business. And I don't believe for a second that a handful of rapid punk fans are going to give birth to a grass roots campaign that will topple a 20 million subscriber-base business.
Not to harp on the punk music fan base, but I think you get what I'm trying to say.
Despite what the stock price may lead you to believe, the company is not run by yokels. Sirius XM is in business to make money, not to satisfy every music listener in the United States. The fact is, satellite radio's offerings aren't for everyone, and as it continues to change it might alienate some previous subscribers while at the same time reaching out to some new ones. We're up to our ears in audio entertainment alternatives, the world will continue to turn, I promise.
I was preparing to rant briefly about the idea of a dedicated artist channel (AC/DC) and how useless it is, but then I realized it's pretty cool when its a band you like. Like I said, can't please everybody.