Report: Sirius XM preparing to file for bankruptcy
By Ross Miller 
posted Feb 10th 2009 7:04PM
posted Feb 10th 2009 7:04PM
Read - New York Times
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Well, that didn't last long...
That was exactly my thought on reading the headline.
Does this even qualify as a Dot-Bomb?
seconded. exactly what i thought too!
leykis 101 rulezzzz!!!
Are you SIRIUS !?
what are we supposed to do without satellite radio?
my favorite part of driving somewhere
It's called "Radio".
Please join us, to the life of the commoners... you poor bastard... :)
Wait, so you DON'T pay a monthly fee?
I'm confused.
^holy shit. do they pay you?
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.
I plug my blackberry into my car and listen to Slacker radio when I drive.
@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.
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.
Just listen to conservative talk radio on the AM dial instead!
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.
@Andrew .. I agree.
Get a program for your phone to listen to internet music.
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.
"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.
oh nooooohs!
I guess I wasn't the only one to cancel service after the merger. (former 5-year XM subscriber)
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 :)
You weren't. I did the same thing after they canceled my favorite station.
Canceled my XM subscription. Opie and Anthony wasn't enough reason to keep paying.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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?!
There is no contract you moron
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.
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.
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!
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!
Blast! I was about to get a radio for my car.
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.
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.
This probably is not a surprise to anyone. Their management is just awful.
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.
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.
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.
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!
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
Oh Uncle Paul!
Nothing better than O&A guy waiting to jump all over Hoo Hoo.
^^ 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.
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.
Nothing better happen to my l'il Jimmy Norton, praise His name.
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.
@Dex Are you kidding? I don't think people are whinning over Stern getting $500mil, but that someone would pay him that much. You must have gone to business school to think it costs $100mil/year to keep his operation running. Greedy bastards...
Howard gets 10 weeks of vacation per year - the same exact amount he got on regular radio. He does four five-hour shows a week. With roughly only 25-30 minutes of commercials per show. That is a hell of a lot more show than he was ever able to do on regular radio (four hour show with over an hour of commercials). Plus it's uncensored and hilarious. There have been some great A-list guests recently too.
$100 Million per year for Howard, Robin, Fred, Artie, Gary and everybody else that works on the show. Not just Howard by himself. Sirius has 600,000 subs before he announced he was moving to satellite and about 10 million before the merger. If only a million those new subs subscribed for him, he more than made up for his contract for that year.
@ congoose
You must not have gone to school at all if you can't see the facts which are plain as day!
Just because YOU can't comprehend someone making more than minimum wage, doesn't exclude it from happening, nor does it make them "greedy bastards".
Jealousy is such a horrible demon to be possessed by.
Altough ive never used siruis, i dont want them to go bankrupt, the only thing we need now is more companies shutting down...
I like having XM, if only because of the lack of commercials. I can't stand the Twin Cities stations that spend 1/3 of the hour advertising or the blathering DJs. I do agree that the quality of XM has gotten crappier over the last year though.
That's the one thing I miss about living in MN. KCMP is a great station, I still listen to it online.
I agree, the "no commercial" part is my favourite. And the international news channels, MLB, etc ... Man, this kinda sucks. Now I have to go back to listening to commercials with songs in between. I hope they don't cancel the service.
"has-been shock jock" - Dont know what you listen to, but he's still helms the most entertaining show available.
Agreed. Howard gets me through my work days and Octane gets me there and back, I couldn't be happier.
Doesn't surprise me. I was only an internet radio subscriber, but I lost interest in the service and canceled my subscription a few days ago in favor of a netflix account. I only really listened to the Opie and Anthony show, and it was filled with commercials, so I didn't exactly see the point in spending 8 dollars a month to listen to them. Most of the other channels is music, which is stupid since I and almost everyone else owns some MP3 player and the remainder of the channels are either talk radio with commercials, or a syndication of a free radio channel like NPR or CNN radio.
Howard Stern costs Sirius too much, and XM was burning on their own, now that they combined, they managed to bring the worst out in each other, Sirius's overspending and XM's terrible management. The dream is over guys, satellite radio is dead, long live internet radio.
You are paying for internet radio? Check out http://www.pandora.com
Yeah, because pandora has talk radio right? How about you reed the message before spamming me.
That's funny, i did the same thing. I was a subscriber for 3.5 years. I am a stern show fan, but for a year I debated getting rid of it. they gave me the free extension and tried again, but I told them I was tired of it. It took a month to get used to being without it. I know 5 people in north AL that have canceled this year, looks like a trend driving this.
The Music started sucking gradually over the last year. I love stern, but to be honest I would never pay $13 to listen to him in the car. I used the internet service more than my car service and they were going ot add a price hike for that. BTW, I'm rich but that doesn't mean I want to pay money for something that is not worth it.
I think Dish Network will bail them out and tehy will keep running, but I would suspect some changes ot the service if that happenned.
Well this is a bit shocking. Though, when you're in a recession, is satellite radio something you REALLY need?
Clear Channel grins.
I was wondering when this would happen. A previous news story indicated that SiriusXM has nearly $1bn of debt coming due this year, and not nearly enough revenue to make the payment.
Recently SiriusXM notified me, a current subscriber, of the increased monthly fee and new fee for listening over the internet, and they suggested in their email that i lock in for a year or three at the current rate, and i would be able to save as much as $200 over the normal monthly rate with new fees attached.
I recognized this as a last-ditch effort to rake in as much revenue as possible to avoid insolvency. Though tempting, i decided just to continue as a monthly subscriber.
This is depressing. It feels like I've been waiting FOREVER for the StarPlayr app on the iPhone, and now this. Great.
Fuck EchoStar, and I knew this shit would go downhill after the merger. Greedy bastards, now look where this ended up. Ridiculous!
Podcasts!
My only hope is that EchoStar buys them and then makes it exclusive to DISH (and internet). NFL package is the ONLY thing holding me to DirecTV but even that is bothersome when they charge on-top for HD games. I enjoy the music that comes with my package, but if it goes exclusive to DISH....it is bye-bye to DirecTV.
Fuck...I NEED my NPR-Now.
the tom leykis show killed ,stern. He makes stren look like an angel.,.,
Leykis is so boring...
I tried.
Leykis rules!
Stern is just boring. I mean whats the point of having "nudity" on a radio show.
meh both those companies were doomed from the beginning, when it comes down to it the general public would rather just get free radio than pay for it. long-haul truckers will be pissed, but this bankruptcy was inevitable.
the only reason these companies are even still around is because they merged, and obviously that didnt do enough.
Good thing I switched to Slacker last month.
Another planned corporate theft!
This was the plan for almost two years ago.
A friend of mine was one of the corporate big shots, I asked him if for $300 should I buy the lifetime subscription, he advised me the most to buy was yearly.
Now I know why.
I have an XM radio.. used it like a week. It didn't work in a lot of places, couldn't use it as a portable radio... ended up going with the Zune - loaded it up with all the music I liked and podcasts for non-music and some audiobooks and some videos...
And of course, it has an FM radio, so I can still listen to current music, should I wish to.
I hope someone buys them. I love my sirius subscription. We listen to it exclusively to and from work. Shame if they go under...not sure what I'd listen to. FM is absolute trash.
Thanks Justice department for taking forever to approve the merger just to bleed these companies dry.
Victory for clear channel and if they fold back to boring commerical bombarded radio.
Im fine with internet radio and my Zune, internet radio has way more songs then XM or FM
I don't think they will go off the air or at least I hope not, because I can't stand FM. I would rather drive down the interstate with my windows down with nothing on then have to go back to terrestrial radio. I hope they don't get rid of Howard Stern, even though he does take too many vacations and every Friday off. If they do go off the air then I guess I will have to listen to my ipod.
Good for Sirius/XM. They deserve what's coming to them after the mess that was the merger. I canceled my service about two months ago and have been listening to Slacker radio using their portable player ever since.
And to anyone who thinks that Howard Stern's show is still entertaining, get your ass back to 1995.
I just hope Ron & Fez make it out of this okay. Other than that, may the entire thing crash and burn.
How did XM or Sirius made a mess of the merger? It's the government that dragged it out and made a mess of it. The decision took longer then oil company mergers.
This sucks. Stern :(
Interesting that most of the responses seem to be that XM isn't worth it anyway. I wonder why that is. There are very few that even mention Sirius, which is what I've been subscribing to for four years. I listen to primarily one channel that isn't even available over the web. My wife locks into two music channels and occassionally we venture into comedy and some of the others. Sports are great when I can't be near a TV.
The only thing I dislike about my Sirius service is the damn trees growing beside my apartment that keep me from getting a consistently usable signal inside.
I'm crossing my fingers and hoping they don't go anywhere.
Probably because the bulk of the stations to get canned during the merger were XM. That's why I bought XM in the first place; the stations that had DJs had folks that actually knew something about the music they were playing, and managed to be relatively unobtrusive, and they played better music in the first place. Every single one of my presets was replaced with it's nearest Sirius crap equivalent (except Fungus; the punk stations both just disappeared altogther) meaning irritating DJs talking about their crappy lives playing bland, overproduced junk. No thanks.
What are you some Sirius fanboy? Is it really that interesting? Is it?
@Ominx
You're a damn idiot.
I posed a legitimate observation. If you've gotten nothing to add, then fine but take your you-must-be-a--fanboi crap to an Apple post. Yeah, I like Sirius, but it had nothing to do with being a Sirius fanboy. When I decided to get satellite radio, the reason I went with Sirius is because they were getting the rights to NASCAR programming. If the contract was going to XM, that's what I would have subscribed to.
"Interesting that most of the responses seem to be that XM isn't worth it anyway. I wonder why that is. There are very few that even mention Sirius, which is what I've been subscribing to for four years."
Because as stated above, XM listeners got screwed over in the merger. Many of the services/stations that they subscribed to no longer exist.
Ouch
The friggin delay in getting the merger approved did not help this situation. How long was it, 15 months? You wonder if they had been approved earlier would it have helped. There are a lot of naysayers here, but for someone who loves sports on the radio, Sirius/XM can not be beat. It is a steal. If you subscribe to all the radio subscriptions for MLB, NFL, NHL, etc., you would be paying way more a month, plus you can't get those broadcasts in the car. If you don't like SAT radio, fine, but many do - 20 million plus - and as an original subscriber, I for one hope they find a way to make it. I want to hear MLB on the radio this year!!
Id rather pay 10 extra dollars for faster internet to download more music , faster
I've had Sirius for several years and it has been awesome. Before that, I used XM and it totally sucked. Turned me off satellite radio. I'm glad I decided to try Sirius. Then the merger came along, and everything that got touched by XM on Sirius now sucks. Everything! XM totally sucks it. I really don't know how they lasted as long as they have. And I'm not a Stern fan. Actually, I don't really like him at all, never listen to him. It's the programming of the music channels that have been affected. Kind of a bummer, but no surprise that XM is now dragging Sirius down into the pits as well. What a pile of crap XM is...
test
you can't be serious about xm
slacker.com on my BlackBerry Storm FTW!
I was definitely expecting a sad face on the Sirius dog, or an X where the star is. Sorry for being off topic, but Engadget has had some seriously lulz-worthy pictures lately. I'm still chuckling at the Carrie mockup from a few days ago.
Don't really miss it. XM81 and 82 have sucked in recent times anyway and I have a far better collection playing in my car via an iPod hookup.
I tell ya, I don't get why they gays are so hyped up about this marriage thing, its so overrated.