We've thought it to be coming for quite some time, given the string of bad news for XM and good news for SIRIUS. Today's second quarter numbers released from SIRI show SIRIUS outpacing XMSR in subscriber growth, a vitally important number for the two battling companies.
"Sirius, boosted by an exclusive deal with shock jock radio personality Howard Stern, said it added about 600,640 net new subscribers in the quarter, a 64 percent growth from the same period last year. It ended the quarter with 4.7 million subscribers, still short of XM's nearly 7 million subscribers.
XM said it added 398,000 net new subscribers, a 38 percent drop in net subscriber growth compared to last year's period curbed by new product availability. XM shares were flat in Nasdaq trade after falling as much as 5 percent before the market opened."
There's still a very long way to go before satellite radio becomes profitable. Continued strong growth does help to sway the doubting Thomas', and at least gets SIRIUS a bit closer to paying the bills.
In what iBiquity (the intellectual property holder behind HD Radio) is calling a "watershed moment" in the history of digital broadcasting, a Swiss station has purchased and is broadcasting on the first HD radio transmitter in Europe.
88 Radio Sunshine exists in a portion of the Alps where FM signals are spaced only 100 kHz apart on the dial, and several months of testing were performed before the announcement of the new signal at HD Radio Days, a conference in Lucerne, Switzerland this week.
"BE's implementation of the HD Radio system easily met all our digital requirements, even exceeding technical expectations despite our mountainous coverage area," said Markus Ruoss, principal owner of 88 Radio Sunshine, a private commercial radio station located in Lucerne, Switzerland.
Field-strength measurements of HD Radio broadcasts on Radio Sunshine exceeded acceptable levels, giving the station a green light to begin uninterrupted HD Radio broadcasts on its main and eventually some of its 12 boosters and translators in the region. Radio Sunshine is operating HD Radio broadcasting under voluntary status with the Switzerland Office for Communication (OFCOM).
Until now I hadn't been aware of any plans to use iBiquity's HD Radio system in Europe. The addition of some European markets to the consumer base for recievers could help being down prices, which are still a major hurdle for consumer adoption in the US.
Ever get a wrong number call? Of course, everyone with a phone has experienced the inconvenience of a wrong number, whether on the dialing or recieving end. What about 1200 of them, in one day...
XM made a tiny mistake in when printing 78,000 direct mail postcards for direct mail requesting customers to update their billing information, by phone. XM did what every girl in a disco has done to me over my entire life, gave out the wrong phone number. The errant digit led callers to a Eureka, California small business who according to the Times Standard fielded 200-300 wrong numbers per hour over the course of a day.
And get this, the fun continues with the 3rd class mailing being dribbled into mailboxes over the next 2 weeks. The owners of the Eureka, California company are hoping that some sort of financial settlement can be reached for loss of business and the cost of the 800 calls.
Our sister blog Engadget is all a buzz about SIRIUS' first entry into the DAP market. Tech Effect even managed to snap a picture of the device when CEO Mel Karmazin briefly flashed it during his keynote at this week's Convergence 2.0 conference, and we were lucky enough to be tipped off.
No new concrete details but, SIRIUS promises that they'll have the new DAB in stores by the end of the summer.
Engadget expects to see more pictures and get more specs before the launch date, and we'll be sure to keep you posted.
MSNBC pitches woo for HD Radio in a recent article, "Making Waves: HD Radio tunes up broadcasters' options for listeners", which makes HD Radio sound like a panacea for broadcasters and listeners alike. I'm not buying it, and I'm the kind of consumer that would easily be an early adopter of the technology if it were warranted.
Sure, HD Radio, if widely adopted and massaged, will be an amazing advance in the world of broadcasting, and in many ways it already is in Europe. Adding channel room to crowded markets, supplemented with RDS to warn us of traffic tie-ups and slippery conditions, HD Radio will be the answer to a dying FM radio market.
Or should I say, could have been. The above scenario could turn out, but it's likely not to. With satellite radio dominating the hive mind, many people instantly think satellite when you mention digital radio. Marketing has already conditioned the public to a wide range of choices, and the need to pay a monthly subsciption cost to get them. Digital=Pay when it comes to radio in the minds of most consumers, and that perception is going to be hard to overcome.
Auto makers are already integrating SIRIUS and XM, while HD is hard to come by in new model options. Before you run right out and buy an HD set at the behest of MSNBC, take a minute to surveil your local programming options, I'll bet they are far from robust.
Clearchannel is making a $100 Million dollar bet on HD in the top 75 US markets. It remains to be seen whether once they build it, anyone will come listen.
Rumors of this were running around recently, but it's now a confirmed deal. Loveable, pot-head bio-diesel salesman Willie Nelson is coming to XM Radio with a whole channel to himself.
The new channel will replace
"Hank's Place" (channel 13) and will be, quite predictably, called "Willie's Place" effective July 10.
Namesake, Willie Nelson, will play cretive director for the new offering. Possibly the coolest part of all this, XM is building new studios for "Willie's Place" at Nelson's BioDiesel Truck Stop in Carl's Corner, Texas. The channel will begin broadcasting live from Carl's Corner in 2007.
Willie is a hep cat, and this shoud bring a depth of alterna-county programing to XM that SIRIUS can't currently match. With Country being a popular segment amongst a large portion of the US population, bringing a heavyweight name like Nelson on board can only be good for XM.
I reported over on The Digital Music Weblog that UBC is preparing to offer on the go downloads directly from your digital radio reciever. You'll soon be able to listen to a digital radio station, hear a song your like and purchase it on the spot to be downloaded to your choice of portable player at a later time.
I point out some issues with it, and I can't exactly call my self jealous of the UBC offering. One thing however bugs me, and it's becoming a constant theme. The US has entirely botched the roll-out of HD radio, first by chosing the wrong format (causing more expensive radios and incompatibility between the US and Canada) and we're going to pay for it in the long run. SIRIUS and XM are able to thrive not only because they offer uncensored content, but becuase they offer a level of choice that you simply cannot cram into the space between 87.9 and 107.9 on the dial.
Europe is already getting a taste of what can be done, and digital radio sales are soaring. New technologies are being built around the digital delivery system, and more are surely to come. Will the US miss the boat entirely, just like we've missed out on RDS (the Radio Data System for in car delivery of text information)?
Icon of American television, Barbara Walters, will be bringing her archived interviews to SIRIUS. Famous for her in-depth and sometimes teary interviews with top celebrities, Walters back-catalouge will get new life in the form of a weekly two-hour series starting early next year.
Also on the docket for SIRIUS subscribers will be a one-hour call in show produced four times a year and featuring Walters. The show, to be called "Ask Barbara Anything" appears to be a turn the tables concept, allowing the public to interview thier most beloved interviewer.
This is a really cool bit of content to add to the SIRIUS lineup. Some of Walter's older interviews, and some with now dead celebrities, should still hold up and remain as entertaining and engaging as they once were on ABC tv.
Go go market unification. Well, not just yet, but it could be coming. Even with regulatory "question marks" looming, Mel Karmazin says he'd buy XM if the price were right.
The merger idea has been floated before, and many are certain that a consolidation between the two is inevitable in the long term. Still, when Karmazin talks, people listen and when he talks about a buy out of rival XM, it gets everyone talking.
Not the least of which is long time industry cheerleader, The Motley Fool. In the Fool's analysis, "If it does happen, it's likely to happen sooner rather than later. If XM and Sirius hit their mark and start producing positive operating cash flow in a few quarters, a lot of the bearish sentiment that has been marinating the stocks in recent months will evaporate. Prices will start inching higher, creating less of an incentive for XM and Sirius to cash out, and the potential acquirers may not be willing to pay those higher prices."
The Motley's have a point. Profitable, these two are going to be giants to contend with in terms of stock price. They will have created a new industry, something that isn't easy to do. To the victor goes the spoils, as they say.
Everybody's a critic when it comes to start-ups. USA Today's Matt Krantz says he's bearish on SIRIUS, due to lackluster returns and the failure to turn a profit as of yet (You mean they're trying to make money?)
Krantz explains, "Satellite radio was a classic case. Shortly after the dot-com bust, investors looking for wild and exciting investment opportunities didn't lose any time investing in satellite radio. It seemed to have unlimited promise. And it didn't seem to matter that Sirius hadn't made a dime and analysts were torn on when, or if, profits would arrive."
Well true, but it takes time to build infrastructure and, the adoption rate of satellite radio is unparelleled in any other new broadcast medium so far in our history. I think Krantx is just a little ticked about Howard Stern making more money than should be legally allowed for someone who sits in front of a microphone, writing, "the biggest winner on the stock has been shock jock Howard Stern, who was paid $100 million a year plus given the opportunity to cash in $191 million in stock. You can read about Stern's mega payday here.
"[now] The stock is trading around $4.45 a share. That's a 13% decline since April 2005. Interestingly, too, investors haven't cashed in on Stern, either. The stock is down 35% since he started on the air. Meanwhile, the company still loses money, making it impossible to value the stock using any standard method."
I'm pretty sure that the momentum is in SIRIUS' favor. Mel Karmazin is a strong leader, and barring anything unforseen (like FCC regulation of content, or a few satellites crashing and burning) SIRIUS has a bright future.
A new HD Radio AM station has gone online, something that's becoming a regular occurance in the U.S. The catch is, this time the station is in Surabaya, Indonesia.
"Broadcast Electronics said the use of a new HD Radio system in Surabaya, Indonesia, marks the return of private AM radio to that nation.
The medium-wave system on 1062 kHz was installed on Radio Sangkakala in April, some 15 years after private AM stations in Indonesia migrated to FM, virtually abandoning the medium-wave band."
This marks the first known AM HD Radio station in Asia.
"Crazy" Jim Cramer of CNBC's Mad Money says XM Satellite Radio (XMSR) and SIRIUS Satellite Radio (SIRI) are overvalued, and the satellite Radio industry as a whole has "peaked".
Citing market capitialization as too large, and pointing to XM's recent miss in subscriber number targets, Cramer says XMSR and SIRI only represent value now if they merge.
Cramer says on the short term, he would be long SIRI and short XMSR.
I'll agree on long SIRI and short XMSR but, I don't think mergers are where the butter for this bread lie, at least not yet. SIRI needs to capitalize and expound upon the recent gains it has made against XMSR in the market. SIRIUS has been on a rampage lately, and XM is facing some difficult and bumpy roads ahead in the form of lawsuits and legal battles.
If SIRIUS can launch useable and relevant video feeds soon, and well ahead of XM, they will have established a strong foothold in a market that didn't exist 3 years ago. History is written by the victorious, and I think SIRIUS will be writing the book on how Satellite Radio killed FM.
"Each time, I'd tuned the Recepter to the "HD2" channel of a local radio station -- but the station had allowed this second, digital-only broadcast to go silent for no apparent reason. The first offender was WTOP; instead of its HD2 feed's usual pleasant classical music, I heard silence. Rather, I heard nothing -- with no music to awake me, I enjoyed an extra hour of blissful shut-eye.
WAMU pulled the same stunt a couple of weeks later, silencing its second channel."
Harkening back to the early days of TV, it seems many HD broadcasters are only filling the HD2 airwaves when they have something special to offer. According to WAMU's website, Pegoraro has it all wrong.
"At the moment, WAMU is only broadcasting programming content on one channel - 88.5 FM. During special events, we will use the second channel to bring you programming without interrupting our regular broadcast. After the event, we will continue to broadcast program content only on our main channel."
The other station mentioned in the story, WTOP, barely gives mention to HD Radio on its website, instead burying some HD Radio feelgood marketing deep within the site's structure.
If a tech reporter from The Washington Post finds it too difficult to understand when and what is suppoed to be on HD2 feeds of his local stations, and if the stations themselves barely bother to publish information on what they are making available, what hope does the average listener have? And, just how is anyone ever supposed to start salivating over HD Radio in the U.S.?
Our big sister Engadget (otherwise known as "the pretty one") passed us the lowdown on the Samsung neXus.
"We've always been a bit skeptical of portable DAPs like the Sirius S50 and Samsung neXus that promise to let you listen to sat radio content on-the-go, because since neither device includes a built-in satellite receiver, you're stuck with the programming you've recorded while the player was docked at home."
We'll conceede that our sis' has a point, you can't listen to live programing on the go with the neXus. However, if you work in an office building where you can't get a shot at the sky, there is a real point behind the neXus. Dock it at night, grab a few fresh hours of your favorite channel and then listen to it when your access to blue sky is limited.
Engadget says that you're better off shelling out a few more bucks for the Pioneer Inno or Samsung Helix, which both allow you to pick up and record live feeds right out of the box, no dock necessary. I agree, but I still wouldn't pass up a neXus at a reasonable price point.
This is patent non-sense, as it's one of those ideas that isn't actually so much an idea as it is the natural progression of things. However, XM Satellite Radio has applied for a patent to incorporate HD radio transmitters into satellite radio recivers. Instead of the current FM modulators available in most radio models, XM seeks to add HD capability allowing a portable radio what is essentially a wireless digital input to a car audio system.
In the patent application, the company notes that its "high quality digital signal broadcast by XM Satellite Radio is ideally received by a digital satellite receiver for best audio reproduction, but in many instances an analog frequency modulation technique is utilized to reproduce the digital signal to take advantage of existing FM receiver car audio hardware.". As satellite radio owners know, "high quality digital signal" is a little bit of a misnomer, it's not exactly CD quality. An HD Radio modulator might help slightly, but you're still reproducing a compressed digital signal that is full of artifacts and noise.
We've thought it to be coming for quite some time, given the string of bad news for XM and good news for SIRIUS. Today's second quarter numbers released from SIRI show SIRIUS outpacing XMSR in subscriber growth, a vitally important number for the two battling companies.
In what iBiquity (the intellectual property holder behind HD Radio) is calling a "watershed moment" in the history of digital broadcasting, a Swiss station has purchased and is broadcasting on the first HD radio transmitter in Europe. 
MSNBC pitches woo for HD Radio in a recent article, "
Rumors of this were running around recently, but it's now a confirmed deal. Loveable, pot-head bio-diesel salesman Willie Nelson is coming to XM Radio with a whole channel to himself. 
Icon of American television, Barbara Walters, will be bringing her archived interviews to SIRIUS. Famous for her in-depth and sometimes teary interviews with top celebrities, Walters back-catalouge will get new life in the form of a weekly two-hour series starting early next year. 
"Crazy" Jim Cramer of CNBC's Mad Money says XM Satellite Radio (XMSR) and SIRIUS Satellite Radio (SIRI) are overvalued, and the satellite Radio industry as a whole has "peaked". 
Our big sister 
This is patent non-sense, as it's one of those ideas that isn't actually so much an idea as it is the natural progression of things. However, XM Satellite Radio has applied for a patent to incorporate HD radio transmitters into satellite radio recivers. Instead of the current FM modulators available in most radio models, XM seeks to add HD capability allowing a portable radio what is essentially a wireless digital input to a car audio system. 
