Competition From on High
Posted by goodmind on February 23rd, 2007
Howard Kurtz, the Washington Post political reporter, of all people makes an excellent point in a recent article on the impending merger of the Sirius and XM satellite radio networks.
The reason these two companies have 13 million subscribers willing to cough up $12.95 a month for something we all grew up thinking should be free is that commercial radio has self-destructed.
All these folks (including me) are paying for satellite because they’re tired of cookie-cutter radio formats stuffed to the gills with commercials. They’re also fed up with focus-grouped music stations that play the same 60 songs until you start hearing the chords in your sleep…
Really, can you think of an industry (okay, maybe American automakers) that has frittered away such huge advantages and sent its customers scrambling for alternatives?
To his point, terrestrial radio invited the menace of satellite upon itself not because of its inferior technology (although that plays a role), but because they have ignored the needs of their customers. As an industry, radio may indeed have conducted a lot of focus groups, but they certainly did not use them to ask their customers what they wanted. If they had, satellite radio would have been a lot more like Iridium.
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