Report: Sirius XM preparing to file for bankruptcy

Sirius XM is preparing to file for bankruptcy and could do so within days, the New York Times reports. According to the article, the move might be a calculated act to pressure Dish Network and EchoStar owner Charles Ergen into making an offer for acquisition. The Wall Street Journal says he offered to purchase the merged satellite radio group late last year and was then brushed off. Despite previous rejections, he's recently reaffirmed his desire try again. If it wasn't before, the honeymoon is now officially over.

Read - New York Times
Read - Wall Street Journal

[Lando Calrissian @ Feb 10th 2009 7:07PM]

Well, that didn't last long...

[Freakin Ijit @ Feb 10th 2009 7:42PM]

That was exactly my thought on reading the headline.

Does this even qualify as a Dot-Bomb?

[a ham sandwich @ Feb 10th 2009 8:00PM]

seconded. exactly what i thought too!

[philosopher @ Feb 10th 2009 8:04PM]

leykis 101 rulezzzz!!!

[Juan Marquez @ Feb 10th 2009 10:17PM]

Are you SIRIUS !?

[waffleburger @ Feb 10th 2009 7:07PM]

what are we supposed to do without satellite radio?

my favorite part of driving somewhere

[TomTom2007 @ Feb 10th 2009 7:17PM]

It's called "Radio".
Please join us, to the life of the commoners... you poor bastard... :)

[Devin @ Feb 10th 2009 7:41PM]

Wait, so you DON'T pay a monthly fee?

I'm confused.

[scott @ Feb 10th 2009 8:00PM]

^holy shit. do they pay you?

[Andrew @ Feb 10th 2009 8:29PM]

My new BMW has Radio, HD Radio, Sirius, and iPod, and I definitely use Sirius as much as my iPod. Sirius offers a ton of channels to find what you specifically like, and you find a lot of new bands to listen to. To me it's definitely worth the cost, especially when you team it up with online streaming (and soon Starplayr on the iPhone). I listen to Sirius all the time at work.

Sure, there are alternatives. I could listen to the crappy FM stations that are half commercial and the other half crappy top 40 songs, or I can listen to my music on my iPod, or I can listen to Pandora at work, but I find I get tired of my songs at times and Pandora gets old and repeats too much for long listening (at work). Sirius is definitely worth the cost to me for another source of music and a ton of stations to choose from.

There's certainly no reason to be negative regarding more choice. If you don't want it, then don't pay for it, but I for one would definitely like to see them pull out of all of this on top, and preferably not with the help of EchoStar. I don't think that would do much good for the service.

[Anticrawl @ Feb 10th 2009 8:45PM]

I plug my blackberry into my car and listen to Slacker radio when I drive.

[Lane @ Feb 10th 2009 8:52PM]

@I am not iEye, i swear

But, you BUY the 1000s of tracks for $1 each, when you can get legal music for less than $15/mth and get a rotation of songs that change periodically with Sirius XM.

[EdgeOne @ Feb 10th 2009 9:00PM]

It takes about a month or so to get used to not having it anymore. At the time I just couldn't justify the monthly cost but if you consider it a mobile therapist for driving among idiots, its quite affordable.

[Jake B @ Feb 10th 2009 9:18PM]

Just listen to conservative talk radio on the AM dial instead!

[midiwall @ Feb 10th 2009 9:51PM]

Ditto with Anticrawl... I've had XM in all of my vehicles for years, but the service has just become more carp with each passing hour. It's still a better alternative to FM, but having found Slacker in the last couple of months is making pretty dern happy.

[Andir3.0 @ Feb 10th 2009 11:17PM]

@Andrew .. I agree.

[Fernando @ Feb 11th 2009 12:40AM]

Get a program for your phone to listen to internet music.

[burgerbat @ Feb 11th 2009 1:10AM]

For a bunch of gadget geeks you guys sure do love to hate cool shit. Satellite radio, in my oh-so-humble-opine, is the single biggest leap in radio technology since FM. How can you not love what satellite radio has to offer? Unless your tastes run somewhere real strange, there's something for everyone at Sirius-XM.

Stern alone is worth the monthly price, and anyone who says otherwise obviously has poor taste. His format is copied by all, especially his former competitors at XM. Those that don't have the service are the first to say it sucks, while anyone who uses the service absolutely loves it.

I listen on my computer, car, and soon, my iPod. Fuck Slacker and Pandora and whatever other bullshit, nothing, I mean nothing, beats the greatness of Jam On or the Grateful Dead Channel. I'm sick of fucking despairing poons hate on shit because it costs money, and want the quality of a product you pay for without handing over cash. HD radio is shit, FM radio is shit. More commercials than music. And even the music is commercials. Cry all day about how they had it coming, which is bullshit, (see FCC's prolonging of merger approval); cry because it costs money, but even the people who claim to have canceled their subscription "days ago" still had bought multiple receivers.

Gee, didn't mind spending a couple hundred dollars when the economy was good, but now you're poor and you didn't set aside a little of that money you spent on receivers to keep paying for a subscription. So now you have to shit on the whole thing. Such bullshit.

[Rocketboy @ Feb 11th 2009 7:13AM]

"Stern alone is worth the monthly price, and anyone who says otherwise obviously has poor taste. His format is copied by all, especially his former competitors at XM. "

That statement alone makes any and all arguments you've just made (in the past and as well in the future) null and void.

[webon @ Feb 10th 2009 7:09PM]

oh nooooohs!

[GeekPI @ Feb 10th 2009 7:10PM]

I guess I wasn't the only one to cancel service after the merger. (former 5-year XM subscriber)

[JoN @ Feb 10th 2009 7:16PM]

no you weren't... i just canceled my 4 radios today before reading this story... quality has gone down, rates have gone up, and the internet as well as several iphones in the house has way too many options... hoping this news doesn't get all over too fast - i had asperations of selling my hardware on ebay :)

[Jeremy @ Feb 10th 2009 7:34PM]

You weren't. I did the same thing after they canceled my favorite station.

[Darrell @ Feb 10th 2009 7:39PM]

Canceled my XM subscription. Opie and Anthony wasn't enough reason to keep paying.

[Asuka @ Feb 10th 2009 7:50PM]

Canceled a month ago. I got sick of Stern's 4 day work week, monthly 2-week vacations, and general lack of effort. Recently he told his listeners to cancel if they didn't like his schedule, so I did. Further, the music selection on the channels has gotten worse since the merger. Very repetitive and pedestrian. If I wanted to listen to the same 8 songs over and over, I would just listen to FM.

[rory @ Feb 10th 2009 8:23PM]

I tried to cancel yesterday, but they gave me 3 months free to stick around, so I figured what the heck, I'll see what happens.

[Tobias Partridge @ Feb 10th 2009 8:30PM]

Loved XM when it was just XM. The merger messed it all up. I canceled a couple weeks ago. Using the iPod and iPhone now.

[Cassini @ Feb 10th 2009 8:44PM]

I canceled my XM service last year. I loved it, but just didn't use it enough.


But it's no surprise this is happening to XM and Sirius in this economy. They work so hard and spend all that time in order to merge, only to end up claiming bankruptcy. What a shame.

[mavrck @ Feb 11th 2009 2:30PM]

Howard is an idiot and should be dumped. I was a 4-5 year, 2 radio user and canceled about 6 months back. The play lists kept shrinking and it was easy to see where they wanted to go (see fm radio). I'm deeply saddened that they ran what was so great into the ground.

[Derek @ Feb 10th 2009 7:12PM]

You can't charge someone $10 a month for crap (held to a contract, no less) and expect them to come back willingly unless $10 is a trivial amount of money to them. The everyman who wants good music would maybe pay $5 a month maybe billed quarterly with no activation crap and automatic billing.

Why the hell do they try to rope people in when they have zero competition in their market?!

[Kris @ Feb 11th 2009 10:07AM]

There is no contract you moron

[Derek @ Feb 11th 2009 1:00PM]

Moron, eh?

From the Sirius XM TOS (looks like as much like a contract as Sprint, Verizon, et al):

Regarding termination:

Cancellation Fee: You will be charged a cancellation fee if you cancel a one-year or longer Subscription during the first year of service. The standard cancellation fee is currently $75.00. Promotional offers may have different cancellation fees.

IN THE UNLIKELY EVENT THAT WE CEASE BROADCASTING THE SERVICE, WHETHER AS A RESULT OF A LIQUIDATION, BANKRUPTCY, OR OTHERWISE, ALL PREPAID SUBSCRIPTIONS WILL BE TREATED AS NONREFUNDABLE.


Sit on it, Fonzi.

[Kris @ Feb 18th 2009 9:15AM]

A contract is not required and is only useful to save about $2 a month. DON'T SIGN A CONTRACT IF YOU DON'T WANT A CONTRACT.

Stupid idiot.

[PrimalSteak @ Feb 10th 2009 7:12PM]

Don't worry; just because they're filing for bankruptcy doesn't mean they will stop providing their service. SGI filed for bankruptcy a while back and they're still cranking out ridiculously high-end servers + supercomputers!

[John Sullivan @ Feb 11th 2009 12:23AM]

Sure, SGI is still clinging to life and has outrageously expensive servers and service plans available, but is anybody buying??? Wish that somebody would, since my SGI stock is worthless, but at least they split off MIPS/B and that's holding some tiny shred of value.

So what are the odds that XM will be able to entice new subscribers in this economy? Sure puts that March 11th rate hike into perspective. Glad I didn't pay for 2009 in advance!

[Jim @ Feb 10th 2009 11:19PM]

Blast! I was about to get a radio for my car.

[francisco @ Feb 10th 2009 7:14PM]

Well we don't really need them but I don't want them to fail. If they do its just more people added to the unemployment count.

[Eric Van Boven @ Feb 10th 2009 7:18PM]

Guess thats what happens when people only listen to radio in a car and prefer the free one. That and hd radio is free too.

[Derek @ Feb 10th 2009 7:16PM]

This probably is not a surprise to anyone. Their management is just awful.

[ab832 @ Feb 10th 2009 7:20PM]

Echostar FTW!

Seriously though, the only way XM/Sirius can survive is if they are bought out. Echostar already has the resources to run Dish Network, it would not be too hard for them to add XM/Sirius.

[Eric @ Feb 10th 2009 8:14PM]

The problem isn't running the service, it is the outrageous prices they pay for programing. If they go into bankruptcy, they can cancel/renegotiate them and try to get better terms.

[Ted @ Feb 11th 2009 12:30AM]

In this economy it's pretty hard to justify buying a company that doesn't have a very good business model.

There's a huge portion of the population who will never deal with satellite radio simply due to the annoyance of installing it into their cars without built in receivers (the vast overwhelming majority of cars)

There's a huge portion of the population (overlapping with above) who simply won't pay for it.

iPods don't go out when you go under a bridge, into a tunnel, or get out of your car. People already own these devices.

The convergence of DAP and phone is obvious and that opens the door to network streaming. I use last.fm and Tuner on my iPhone with completely acceptable results. No worse than satellite in my experience.

So yeah, on the surface it makes sense that a satellite provider might want to buy another but it really just doesn't make a lot of business sense. The only angle I could see is bundling with their TV packages but that's a huge chunk of money to spend on what is basically a promotional item. Say you charge $5/month for the service bundled with DirectTV. Would it be more appealing to the customer to just get $5 off their DirectTV service instead? Probably.

[asuka @ Feb 10th 2009 7:26PM]

Is it any surprise? When a company is willing to pay a has-been shock jock half a billion dollars to work 4 days a week and take 4 months of vacation a year, there is probably something seriously wrong with the management. Thanks for ruining another good idea, Mel!

[Uncle Paul @ Feb 10th 2009 7:34PM]

Exactly. One good thing if the company goes under is Howie will have to crawl back to terrestrial begging for his spot back or retire like he should have years ago. He was already set for life before this deal - he had to be greedy and take half a billion and now he'll have nowhere to go.

Ron & Fez, noon to 3, XM202, SIR197

[Ted's Comment Emporium @ Feb 10th 2009 8:12PM]

Oh Uncle Paul!

[Jonhimslf @ Feb 10th 2009 8:16PM]

Nothing better than O&A guy waiting to jump all over Hoo Hoo.

[gt-racer @ Feb 10th 2009 8:15PM]

^^ Ahh Buddaay.

Agreed with it all(both). What alot of people don't understand is that satellite radio excels (or at least should) in the talk segment. The music is a lovely bonus(before it got watered down, and dj's talked. . . seriously KORN on Liquid Metal!! I HATE jose mangin). I listen for basicly one channel now and that's 202, if regular radio wasn't so happy go lucky, morning zoo, censored and so cookie cutter like sat-rad would probably not exist. Same with music but on a lesser scale.

[Jonhimslf @ Feb 10th 2009 8:16PM]

I also love that you're promoting a show which likely has less listeners than Howie while complaining that Howie will have nowhere to go... if Howard can't get a spot on terrestrial radio what'll happen to those two? I think the rivalry between the two sides has to end and probably should have ended years ago. I think the fans perpetuate more than the actual show hosts.

[eddy @ Feb 10th 2009 8:44PM]

Nothing better happen to my l'il Jimmy Norton, praise His name.

[ProfessorDex @ Feb 10th 2009 9:00PM]

Do any of you whining idiots realize that the 500 million Stern got for his show, isn't just for him? It's 100 million/year to cover his salary, his staff's salaries, and production costs for the show.

If this really pans out, it's because the NAB got their way and made the whole merger process drag on over OVER A YEAR which resulted in both Satellite companies hemorrhaging cash.

I personally won't listen to regular radio ever again (nor have I for several months now). It's absolute crap and there's no incentive for it to improve. It will truly be a sad day if Satellite radio goes off the air.