Sirius-XM Satellite Radio Faces Extinction
BusinessWeek reports that Sirius-XM may soon go away. “Sirius signed top talent-including Stern, Martha Stewart, and Oprah Winfrey-to draw in subscribers. But programming costs have triggered heavy losses.” The now-merged former competitors have been on a two-decade spending spree, paid for with Godzilla-sized credit cards. Putting a name to the pain, Sirius-XM’s looking at $1b in debt’s coming due next year, without any way (otherwise known as positive cash flow from operations) to pay off the note. Sirius claims it can continue to fund operations and avoid filing for bankruptcy by raising money from existing lenders, who will be “flexible” about an additional $350n due in May.” Hey! I’ve done that! You get yet another credit card with which to pay the minimum payments due on the old card, right? Well, good luck with that. With people around the globe tightening their belts, and iPod connectivity in cars, you have to think that the satellite radio subscription will be one of the easiest spedning cuts motorists can make. And if there is a God, Howard Stern will find himself out of work.
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So XM sold out to Sirius? What amazing but typical incompetence. Are they graduates of the GM school of management? Seems so. I've been a subscriber to XM since before they had a million subscribers. I thought it moronic to spend huge sums to get sports and Oprah on satellite when they did it, and it certainly looks moronic now. Of course I listen to none of these, but I still get to pay for them. XM was worth 9.95$ a month when I started, was certainly worth the 7$ or whatever when I had a two year contract, but is barely worth the 12.95$ I pay now and won't be worth a penny more. So go extinct. You deserve to.
A majority of Howard's pay was in Sirius stock. I believe the stock price was around $4.00 then and if you look now, the stock price is around $0.40 and I bet thats how the other big names like Oprah got paid so essentially, Sirius or XM didn't lose any money on the deal, it was Howard and the shareholders. One other thing. Why the fuck do people have to argue about stupid shit. If someone wants to pay $12.95/month for something, who is it for someone else to criticize that? It is that person's prerogative to do whatever they want. I could give a shit if someone else uses his/her iPod with their panzy ass podcasts downloaded on it in their car or some other asshole prefers to listen to "free" radio and all the bullshit commercials that they play after playing 3 songs that they just played an hour ago with 30 minutes of commercials in between. I have satellite radio, an ipod, my car radio, my cds and I use all of them. Does anyone give a fuck about me? NO. So to each is own
I have XM and love it, on 9 - 14 hour drives I do, I hear TONS of new music that I have purchased. I have a portable music player, but prefer XM much of the time because I can listen to so many Genres and hear new stuff all the time. To each his own I guess, I am willing to pay the fees, for now. My only gripe would be XM selling out, and getting rid of Fungus for GAH, a 24/7 AC/DC channel!!