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February 07, 2005
Reuters: Satellite Radio's Big Draw: No Commercials - Survey
Reuters reports that satellite radio's biggest attraction isn't original content like Howard Stern, but rather the absence of commercials, according to a survey released on Monday by J.P. Morgan.
Surprising? Not really. Terrestrial Radio has made commercials so long and so frequent that listening is unbearable now. The same was with Cable TV back-in-the-day when being commercial-free was a selling point. Hence my biggest fear that satellite radio will get sold out to advertisers due to the explosive spending and the eventual need to be in the black.
Anyway, the survey of 1,600 consumers, which included subscribers as well as non-subscribers, found almost two-thirds of subscribers' radio listening time is spent with satellite radio over traditional radio. Commercial-free programming is the biggest driver of demand.
But from the Reuters article even more interesting is the statement that, according to J.P. Morgan's forecasts Satellite Radio is expected to have nearly 35 million subscribers by 2010. J.P. Morgan estimates that satellite radio likely will eat into traditional radio listeners by 3.5 percent in 2010. That amount could grow if more satellite radio is available in other places beyond users' cars, J.P. Morgan said.
February 7, 2005 02:52 PM
