Talks of a truce seem to be filling the combative satellite radio space. XM and SIRIUS to play nice against Terrestrial?

Read the XM Talks Sirius Truce article on TheStreet.com

Jim Louderback has a great article from PC Magazine on Satellite Radio today. It's a bit long, but tells a great story of how he got sold on the benefits of satrad.

(On a side note, I'm bringing my camera to NYC again tomorrow... anyone wanna guess why?)

A great article in Bloomberg today about Satellite Radio a distruptive thorn in the sides of Clear Channel and Viacom.

A great snippet:

...satellite radio is where cable television was in the 1970s, a business with few subscribers compared with the traditional broadcast networks. Yet it has the potential to disrupt an industry, says Randall Rothenberg, 49, chief marketing officer at Booz Allen Hamilton Inc. consultants in New York.

Cable TV subscribers accounted for 68 percent of all viewers in 2004, up from 8 percent in 1970, Nielsen Media Research says. Satellite radio service, which XM Satellite inaugurated in September 2001, will have taken four years to capture 4 percent of the market this year, while cable TV needed 13 years.

"Something that gets 7 million subscribers in the blink of an eye is not an inconsequential entrant in the market," Rothenberg says.

Awesome. Read more here.

The Daily Herald has a cute lil' article about Satellite Radio's adoption, with some nice local flare about people and businesses seeing the impact of satellite's increasing awareness.

An article from Forbes points out that Merrill Lynch said some interesting things about the future of the satellite radio industry based on some jointly released data by Arbitron and Edison Media Research.

"We continue to forecast that satellite radio will take a decade to accumulate 40 million subscribers (15% of the terrestrial radio audience) while terrestrial radio revenue should grow in-line with GDP," Merrill said. I personally feel this forecast is low considering the number of automobile manufacturers helping penetration. Deals like the Hyundai offering XM as standard equipment are going to rapidly increase the number of subscribers at a ridiculous pace.

But then Merrill talks about how Satellite Radio awareness is on the rise with Sirius Satellite Radio "taking the lead." Awareness of Sirius rose to 54% in January 2005 from 28% in January 2004, while awareness of rival XM Satellite Radio Holdings rose to 50% from 41%. "We note that Sirius surpassed XM for the first time in this category, partially helped by its high-profile announcements of Howard Stern's and Mel Karmazin's decision to join Sirius," Merrill said, noting that 2 million to 3 million incremental subscribers attributable to Stern "is achievable."

Not sure how much Mel coming on board has to do with consumer brand awareness as most radio listeners have no clue who he is. He definitely had a huge effect on awareness for those on Wall Street, but as for someone recognizing Sirius over XM? That all goes to Howard.

Well, in leu of our nice little discussion on Internet vs Satellite the Daily News has an interesting article about Clear Channel entering into the Web Radio arena.

Lotsa food for thought.

Rolling Stone's recent article Satellite Radio Rocks Out briefly talks about the decline of Rock and Roll on FM, and how it's of special interest to both SIRIUS and XM Satellite Radio (ahem, Liquid Metal?!).

Of course, terrestrial radio executives are quick to dismiss the threat of Satellite Radio, saying they're unconcerned by satellite's comparatively tiny numbers. "It's a blip," says David Field (CEO of Enterco - the fourth-largest radio conglomerate) while smoking his pipe and sipping fine brandy from his snifter.

...Big Radio is in for a fucking surprise.

A recent article in Forbes, Sirius Aims Low, has some harsh words about Sirius' receiver technology. While they tried not to be overly critical, the writer's opinion of the XACT Stream Jockey weren't exactly lovingly written.

One bit I found interesting:

Were it not for the MyFi, I'd be much more positive about this receiver. It's about the same size, and moves easily between home and car. It has a built-in FM transmitter, so you can push the sounds of Sirius programming to any FM radio nearby. This eliminates the need for at least some of the cords. Now all it needs is a battery and a hard drive or flash memory chips crammed into its body to give it the ability to record programming on the fly or on a schedule.

Sounds like the upcoming XACT ReGo. :)

(Thanks Mike!)

Dutch Mandel: Sirius, Watch Your Speed, a cute article written by columnist Dutch Mandel of AutoWeek singing the praises of Sirius, and actually just Satellite Radios in general, after the eye-opening experience he had when the long-term Dodge Magnum arrived with Sirius installed:

Before we go further, let me say of both satellite radio providers: I love you, man! That a listener can pull up five kinds of zydeco, two different NASCAR channels, a religion channel, right-wing blather or left-wing folderol, or local traffic reports regardless of what city you?re in is glorious.

Pretty interesting, give it a read.

Sun-Sentinel: Riding to work on the satellite of love is an article from the point of view of a Sirius Subscriber. Much less of a comparison between XM and Sirius, this article delves more deeply into how poorly Terrestrial Radio has done the job of entertaining listeners.

I realize the corporate czars of conventional radio would disagree that there's anything missing; in fact, they argue that new formats mean more variety than ever. And I certainly realize it is an indulgence, not to mention a shame, to shell out $12.95 a month for something that those allowed to profit off the public airwaves should (one would hope) at least come closer to providing for free.

A very good read, definitely check it out.