I’ve complained both here and at Live from the (upper) Texas Gulf Coast about the changes in programming at Sirius XM since their merger.
Today from Technolizer comes this article, Sirius XM Bleeds Customers, Blame the Programming.
It’s a short article, of which I’ll quote only the last sentence.
That is the central problem for Sirius XM, not the automobile industry. Start running your programming department correctly, and you won’t have such a problem keeping people.
What he said. My guess is that in an effort to cut costs they are opting for music from lesser known artists or less popular music from well known artists. In many cases they play crappy covers of classic songs. At least on Willies Place and The Roadhouse, however my son listens to other stations and tells me it’s the same there.
404,000 lost subscribers has little to do with a drop in car sales. Even if people aren’t buying replacement cars, unless they are cutting costs in general they are very likely to keep their satellite radio. Well, not if the content sinks to near FM station quality. If you’re paying for content that sucks when you can get the same sucky content for free, most people will opt for free and crappy.
Or CDs, MP3s, or some other format.
While I’m grousing, what’s up with the commercials on “commercial free” paid radio? The Blue Collar Comedy Channel (come on, you expect that I listen to that) has advertisements. Pretty much the same cheesy ads that I hear on AM talk radio. They think I’m going to pay for that?
UPDATE: Another grouse. Forcing subscribers to cough up more dough to listen on line was also very stupid. It angered a lot of people when Sirius XM changed the terms and cut off access that people thought that they had already paid for.
For the monthly cost of satellite radio, I can download a couple of MP3 albums per month and have a good selection in about a year. If Sirius XM doesn’t smarten up and improve their content, I and a lot of other people are likely to do just that.
It’s a transitional period. We’re going from a paradigm in which the provider controlled the content (radio) to a paradigm in which the user controls the content (interactive radio). We’re not quite there yet, but it will happen. It already happens online with services like Pandora and Accuradio where the user can accept/reject individual tunes; eventually it will happen with cars and portable devices, also.
Pandora is nice, but for the genres I listen to the play list is relatively short. At least for the short term there is also the limitation that you have to be connected to the Internet either by some means. As WiFi and wireless broadband become more prevalent, that will be less of an issue. At least I hope so. It would be a shame if satellite radio went away, because the wide variety of different types of music offered is wonderful. However, if my choices are to listen to Bill Mack babble, Leon Russell croak out songs, and obscure songs by even more obscure artists or expand my MP3 collection for about the same money, I think I’ll be spending a good amount of time and money at Amazon.com.
I agree with both of you regarding Internet radio. I’ve grown rather fond of Pandora, in fact. As for purchased content, because I take my iPod everywhere I go (except the shower, and someday I’ll be able to do that as well I expect) I find I’ve spent a great deal of money at the iTunes store. Content is pretty good, and it’s relatively inexpensive.I do hope Sirius XM gets their act together. Otherwise the loss they’ve had in subscriptions will turn into an avalanche.
I just cancelled last week. I have a good 6 days’ worth of the same “stations” on my iPod. For me, the DJs were the deal-breaker. I got XM to get away from stupid DJs – and the cheezy commercials. I found myself button pushing my XM receiver as much as when I listened to FM, so it was time for it to go. I wish ’em luck!
Debbie, I too have found that I’m frequently changing channels these days. Until the merger, I hardly ever changed channels, I just left the radio parked on the station I liked the best. The DJs have become more intrusive as you note. Also, on Willie’s Place, it seems like the DJs are constantly humping some singers upcoming show as if they were doing a local broadcast. Not the XM I signed up for. Walt, I have a Sansa MP3 player, so I get my tunes from Amazon. I haven’t figured out how to play the Sansa in the shower, but my truck’s stereo has an auxiliary input so I can use while driving. Which means that there is one less reason to pay for XM if they don’t provide decent content.
I hate to think Sirius/XM could fall victim to what’s made terrestrial radio suck so hard. I still like it, a whole hell of a lot, but at the same time some of those programming choices I don’t understand the least little bit.
The programming is sometimes perplexing. The Roadhouse plays some songs that definitely are not Country Western. Sometimes they are by a singer who is known for CW, but sometimes they are just weird. I swear I heard “Indian Lake” by the Cowsills there the other day. Maybe the genius programmer saw the title and figured it had to be a CW song. It’s still better than terrestrial radio, but the gap is narrowing and it has to be X amount better or people are going to drop it.
It’s not just them. Compare and contrast HBO and Netflix.
BP, you have a good point. I have HBO as part of my cable package. Don’t want it, but it’s part of the tier that I DO want, so I get it. Lot’s of old, not classic, but old, movies. Some of which I would watch, but most of which I either saw when they were new or didn’t care to see. For every “Band of Brothers”, “Curb Your Enthusiasm”, or “Taking Chance” there are 10 movies that weren’t watching when they were new. With HBO it was always that way, though.