Post by unknownDCRTV.com hears that there'll be another bloodbath at DC-based XM
Satellite Radio tomorrow. More personnel cuts on top of the 100 or so
let go in October, after the summer merger with Sirius. Stay
tuned.....
Let's hope this means all those DJs who suddenly feel compelled to
jibberjabber all over the tracks are the ones getting cashiered. Shut up
and play the music, unless you have something truly meaningful to say.
And a promo for some other channel I'm not listening to? Not
"meaningful" by any stretch.
Hacking and slashing the portion of on-air staff who don't serve
significant bts roles as well should have been the primary method by
which salary was cut, if cuts there needed to be. It's the music that
people who wanted satrad for music =want=. Dunno why this seems lost on
company execs: people signed up for your service, guys, because they
wanted to escape from the endless babble and endlesser commercials that
terr-rad has increasingly substituted for the music those stations are
putatively formatted to play, not because they wanted to send you folks a
check every month for more of the same old same-old.
You'd think a smart guy like Karmazin would have noticed by now that
Sirius lagged waaaay behind XM in subscriber growth for several years,
even with the fudging of totals the company employed (counting
complimentary subs for new cars still sitting on dealer lots, anyone?),
until -- and solely because of -- the Stern hiring. Almost no one was
paying for Sirius-style music; they were paying for Howard, or for the
NFL, or for the NBA, or for some combination of other non-music
"exclusives". (With the exception of a couple of music niches, such as
those for stoners and "social" drunks, of course.)
What in the world makes them think people who specifically chose =not= to
have Sirius' music theories imposed on them -- that is, the vast majority
of people who chose satrad for the music, as opposed to the many other
possible reasons -- will want to stay, let alone that so choosing will
expand their household penetration?
Yes, I know the general response will be "Mel's just bringing FM thinking
to satrad", but that's simply not the case: FM thinking =has= no analog
in satrad. He's not just formatting a couple stations that have to be
just slightly better than the others in their particular geographic
territories to keep people listening to advertising, he's creating
several dozen audio channels that need to so inspire their listeners that
they will gladly hand over fair-sized sums of money for the privilege of
enjoying them. Commercial FM has no answer to that problem; the
commercial FM "playbook" is useless in satrad.
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"It's not that I want to punish your success. [...]I think
when you spread the wealth around, it's good for everybody."
-- The One, 14 Oct 08