Sirius Mel thinks Howard Stern will do Sirius video, Dallas Cowgirls come to celebrate
posted Jan 6th 2005 1:06PM
So we checked out the Sirius press conference where they showed off the
Xact ReGo, discussed
Sirius Video, mention Howard Stern 30 times in 30
minutes, and had the Dallas Cowgirls storm the stage.The press room was packed to capacity, and the excitement at
Sirius compared to XM is stunning. Sirius definitely wants you to think they're taking over the world, and that XM
dropped the ball. Click to read on.
We asked Mel Karmazin (top), the new CEO of Sirius radio, if Howard Stern would be leveraging their newly annouced
video formats (peep the video for more on
this). Mel went on and on about Howard being a talent and entrepreneur, then basically admitted that he expected Howard
to leverage it.
Karmazin seems like he is still getting up
to speed on the company, though, but his focus makes it clear to us that he feels XM is, well, done for. Check out the
complete video of Mel’s press conference. Mel went
on to claim that Sirius will double in its subscriber size, and that they are growing much faster than “the other
company.” He also said that he thinks this will be bigger than most analysts and investors think—of course none of
these should be looked at as forward looking statements. We know one thing for sure: 2005 is going to be huge for
satellite radio, and the war has definitely begun.
Cowgirls!!... I mean, Sirius Video!!, woot.
The video isn't working. I really wanted to see the Cowgirls.
Jesus - just how much SIRI stock does Engadget own? XM is far from over, I like the pictures of the shiny new gadgets, but the people who write this nonsense have absolutely no idea what they are talking about.
They foobar'd the link:
http://www.weblogsinc.com/common/videos/ces/CESMel.wmv
Click to see Serious Cowgirls
any of you engadget people own sirius stock, im just wondering?
To understand the pomp and circumstance around Sirius, understand their corporate culture vs that of XM. And it can be broken down to their headquarters locations- Sirius is NY all the way. Loud, boistrous, and in-your-face. XM is inside the DC beltway- stern (no pun intended), stodgy, and measured in their steps. Sirius is playing catch-up to XM, and the NOISE is part of the game. BTW, I am a Sirius customer and a NY Yankees fan, but I am not an in-your-face kinda guy. I could care less about Stern...but I'll watch if his video comes uncensored. ;)
hmmm.. can we get the videos in QuickTime instead or even MP4. WMV is kind of limited....
Thans.
Hey engadget did Cat Schwartz shoot this video? I remember hearing that she was going to do something at CES for you guys. If she did I would like her to have some face time in front of the camera since there wasn't an appearance by the Cowgirls in your video. Thanking you in advance, Jack
The XM Headquarters is anything but stern and stodgy. It's located in an old warehouse WAY on the wrong side of the tracks. The staff and on- air personalities are all die-hard radio fanatics. The music and programming is fantastic, I hear a great new artist every day when listening. This anti-XM rhetoric is really bizarre.
/Subscriber
/DC-Metro Area Resident
/Good friends with some of the DJs
So why, oh great Engadget dudes, didn't you press Mel about what he thinks of gay people? Furthermore, why do you keep deleting my comments?
Yeah, why didn't you ask about Eminem's Shady channel? I think he's offended a few groups over the years...
Sirius has all of this cool new stuff, but it isn't going to help them until they are built into more cars. Ford announced this week(!) that they are going to start putting Sirius into more of their cars. GM & Honda have been installing XM into their cars for three or four years & XM is standard on all Acuras (I think).
Mercedes has Sirius available as a $679 dealer option. That's about $679 more than it should be.
No, no one here owns any stock in Sirius and they are not an advertiser on the site. We have no relationship of any kind with them.
"Sirius has all of this cool new stuff"
huh? what cool stuff? xm has all the same gadgets they have AND they have portable players too... sirius hasen't even announced any portable players.
I think the trend seems to be Sirius is releasing all these flashy press releases and because of Stern are more in the limelight, but the reality is that XM is a more solid company. I don't know... the coverage seems to be "Sirius is doing great, XM's doomed" whereas it's more "Sirius is finally catching up to where they should be"
"It’s looking rough for XM, man, looking rough." Oh really?
Oh, there's a relationship, just not an official one. The writers seem to have something against XM and a big raging one for Sirius. It's blatant.
what kind of camera did you use to shoot the video?
looks good (even uncompressed)
link to review of said camera?
Peter;
Well, I'm glad there's no conflict of interest, because there sure seems to be a strange bias against XM radio here.
I don't have satellite radio, but I'd like to get it soon ... however your questions in the XM press conference seemed like a way to generate controversy and embarass the XM CEO.
It's very disturbing that your questions to the Sirus CEO are so tame in comparision, even by the photos, it looks like the XM press event was a funeral!
So sorry for us being suspicious, but c'mon, wouldn't you be if you were just a reader?
clear channel is an enormous factor in the homogeneity, commercialization and generally craptastic music industry... no true music fan/musician would believe otherwise...
Hey, folks, just because Engadget has an opinion and expresses it doesn't mean they have a financial stake. I start laughing every time I see this kind of opinion. Yes, Engadget will single-handedly move millions of subscribers to Sirius. You're going to inflate their egos. More reasonably, having an opinion doesn't have to be equated with pumping or deflating stock. I think Engadget wears its feelings on its sleeves. Respective several sleeves.
I write Droxy.com for Weblogs, Inc., and I have expressed tons of opinions already about XM and Sirius and no one is accusing me of financial interests. Of course, my traffic is (so far) a fraction of my fine friends here at Engadget--I've only been live for a month--and thus no one is paying attention. Time to become a shock jock.
Well, it just seems odd that XM is presented in such dire straits, especially when Wall Street certainly doesn't agree.
Sirius soared on some press releases, but by this time next month, post-CES, they'll be back at the same state as early December, with investors noting that they've rolled a lot of money on two gambles: the NFL and Stern. Stern alone must bring in millions of customers and keep them to keep Sirius in business. His fate is Sirius' fate, now.
XM gained 1.7 million subscribers this year, thousands on Xmas day, alone. Their stock is valued at $34, as opposed to Sirius' $7.50, and wall street generally feels that their valuations are correct. XM and Sirius have announced equal auto licensing deals (although in at least one case, Toyota, it's an after-factory deal for Sirius...albeit at a cheaper cost).
Ultimately, it's not that Engadget is decrying XM's doom that is confusing, it's that they haven't backed up the repeated assertions with anything related to proof. If they know something we don't, I'd love to hear it. As it stands right now, it just sounds like they're more excited about Sirius for some reason...and given that XM has more gadgets, that seems odd.
I for one am glad to see that Sirius is getting all of this hype. I've been a subscriber for over a year now and haven't had any complaints with them. In fact I moved from XM to Sirius do to their GLBT station (OutQ 149) because Sirius seems to understand that there are millions of different people in the world and it's great to have diversity. Maybe that's why the good folks at Engadget didn't ask "the gay question" because Sirius already offers the only GLBT live media source for the United States.
Satellite radio, period, is a winner for alot of us. XM or Sirius. Doesn't matter which. I subscribe to Sirius, but I'll be honest and say my father and brother in-laws' XM music channels sound better than mine do, and their head units are older. So Sirius can improve. They've just had alot of horn-tooting in the last couple of months. Doesn't mean XM is doomed at all. in fact, didn't they start the '04 year with just over a million subscribers, and didn't they just end it at well over 3 million? XM is not hurting at all. And for the DC guy who somehow got offended by me comparing the companies' corporate cultures to the personalities of the cities themselves- I happen to live close to DC myself, and happen to love that city. I'm sure their DJs are cool, too. hell, the moron on the FM channel out here in central MD is probably cool. So what. I was saying NY is more of an intense environment that bombards you with hoopla, whereas DC is more buttoned up. I'd love to tour XM's studio- I've seen pics and it looks like NASA headquarters. So everybody chill. Both are good. Choice is good. Let's not get into an iPod-or-nothing style black hole...
XM is light years ahead of Sirius on quality of the units. Siri's portable player is a great invention according to one brilliant man it is simply, "the reinvention of the tape recorder."
How come engadget doesn't rip on this portable device as the turd that it is. Stern is too expensive...football too expensive.....Sirius is better off?
All XM has going for them is better hardware, better personalities, cheaper prices, and a crapload more subscribers.
Why did they shut down comments area for the XM entry? Weird.
At least one site is taking Engadget to task about this XM vs. Sirius bias.
"The reporter goes on and blasts the CEO, "any plans to have other racists like KKK on the network" over and over again. I thought this was in poor taste and the CEO handled it as best he could. He said they broadcast a variety of viewpoints from liberal and conservative sides, which is the way it should be"
http://www.firstadopter.com/fa/archives/000595.html
It is kind of weird the way everyone, not just engadget, seems to be tooting Sirius' horn and acting like XM has already gone out of business. It could be just that Sirius is spending soooo much right now acting like they are the number one game in town; and it may work.
I remember when NT 4.0 came out (from Microsoft). Suddenly everyone in the press acted like Novell was doomed and NT owned the world, even though NT had very little market share and NT 4.0 was only a slight upgrade from 3.51. It worked, though, because all of the hype cause customers to switch from Novell, an established, stable networking system to NT seemingly overnight. It was good for me, I was an NT admin at the time, but it was shocking how quickly and how well having all the buzz (even with little to no substance behind it) worked.
And please, I'm not trying to start a Novell vs. MS war; I could care less about which system in either market becomes dominant, I just think Sirius is marketing well right now, and ads, hype, and BS work--at least on us Americans.
I certainly don't care if Engadget has an opinion on the XM vs Sirius issue. My concern is that the opinion is based on the fact that XM carries Dr. Laura and Engadget doesn't like it, so they take every opportunity to portray XM as being in trouble.
Wow. That engadget interview with XM was pathetic. I hate finding out what people are really like.
Sounded like some high-school student with a grudge.
It's laughable that Engadget then trashes XM and claims no bias.
"Their stock is valued at $34, as opposed to Sirius' $7.50, and wall street generally feels that their valuations are correct."
Stock price is a totally meaningless number, except for the trend. Sirius could do a reverse split tomorrow if they wanted to have a higher stock price, but it wouldn't change the value of the company.
Sirius has a market cap of $9.5 billion, and XM's is $7.1 billion. That means the Street thinks Sirius is worth 33% more than XM. Of course, it also means the Street thinks both companies will start to make money, and neither one has managed that yet, so let's just sit tight a bit.
Microsoft in contrast has a lower stock price than XM ($26.75 today), but a $291 billion valuation.
Sirius ahead/better than XM? Does this site have a XM axe to grind or what? BOTH companies have their strengths/weaknesses, but to say that Sirius has better equipment...you NEED to check your sources! XM's tech/chipsets are 12-18 months AHEAD of Sirius's. If anything, Sirius has some MAJOR catching up to do...which is why they HAD to get Stern (and why XM could afford to pass him up).
XM will have 5-6 million subscribers by the end of '05...how many do you think Sirius will have? XM is far from dead...if anything, they are in the position to bring in a suprise deal (like a Ipod/XM combo unit) and kill stone-dead anything Sirius can counter with. XM is in the position to take over market share again....especially with the MLB starting in 3 months.....bye bye SIRI momentum!!
I'm sorry, and I know y'all don't care, but I must correct you...it's not the Dallas Cowgirls, it's the Dallas Cowboy Cheerleaders (they are very adamant about that in these parts). Thank you.
How Sirius is going to be able to afford to pay someone half a billion dollars is beyond me. Its been reported before that there are people that currently work for Sirius that haven't been payed in months from people that used to work there, but now work at XM.
If howard doesn't bring people in, they are so screwed its not funny. Does anyone know if he's going to have an E! show anymore? Sirius is going to need his face otu there as much as possible to sell him. I don't know if its going to work.
I'm a new Sirius customer (a non-portable radio came installed in my new Jeep). I was pumped to find out I could listen to my Sirius account at work via the web. However, I'm concerned that there are no Sirius news/talk/entertainment channels streamable over the web.
I would like to listen to talk/entertainment (and eventually, Howard Stern) over the web so I would not have to invest in a new portable radio.
Will Stern's show be streamable over the web? I really think this should be investigated as a possibility; in my case, I don't even have an office window, so a portable satellite radio probably wouldn't work at my office. The web would be a PERFECT alternative.
Please consider streaming more talk/entertainment over the Internet for us paying customers.