Sirius XM Radio Inc. chief Mel Karmazin mocked the National Association of Broadcasters head David K. Rehr in a recent appearance on the Opie & Anthony show, saying that their opposition to the merger might have had a part in its approval.
"We needed the broadcasters to be very aggressive in opposing the merger," said Karmazin [via FMQB].
"One of the things [NAB] did... is they put a banner on their building that said, 'Stop The Monopoly.' We took pictures of it and sent it to everybody who was on our list," said Karmazin.
"Our viewpoint was, the fact that they were doing it... they're not lobbying every merger that goes on, why would they care?"
"If we are a duopoly on our way to a monopoly, by definition, [terrestrial broadcasters] are not in that pie," added Karmazin. "Thank goodness for it and hats off to the head of the NAB. We all owe him. When we all get to toast this merger, I will be celebrating him first."
I think we all owe Mr. David Rehr a big round of applause, don't you think?
[FMQB]
....And most of all, hats off to all those suckers who believed in satrad and me, holding the bag for dog years of investing, so that I could shit on them at the end, making their stock worth less than a bag of large fries.
After hearing Mel on Stern's show yesterday I'm going to buy more stock. With him at the helm I feel very confident about this company.
Don't buy anymore siri stock. Don't be a sucker investor. Don't listen to these analysts. They're full of it!! This stock is total garbage. It will be a worthless penny stock soon. Sel, sell, sell. $1.65? huh... You can wipe my ass with this stock now. It has no merit.
^ Exactly. The entire reason for many of us wanting the merger in the first place was to drive up the stock price, and the opposite happened. The NAB won as far as im concerned..
@ Bill, I am with you here on this one. I am very confident in Mel, however I think Sirius Xm still have a huge ? to answer. Once we see the 2008 Q3 financials, there should be a good idea on how they are going to do. I have 85000 invested in Sirius already and if I was employeed, I'd be buying more. But, it's like Cramer said, the only ones making out are the Debt collecters. Well, Good Luck!!
the stock is at $1.65, how do you think we feel. betrayed. in order to get financing mel rewarded the companies who delivered the naked short positions...and couldnt fill them.. they didnt believe in his company, and mel stuck it to us longs, who did believe. i believe its like blackmailing..we will give you the money , but you have to cover are naked shorts, who made millions..otherwise , no financing. guess only time will tell, what happens to the stock price. maybe mel would have had to pay a higher price for financing, but do you realize if the financing companies didnt hold him hostage, and they couldnt cover their shorts..the stock price would have been through the roof. just a dream now!
We won the battle... now the war.
I'm just glad I don't see that stupid NAB pumper posting his "NO to Merge Monopoly"... how annoying.
First off, for all of you commenting on the stock and the price- tough luck- if YOU were so damned smart, maybe you woudn't have done so poorly. Most of us here just like the product.
Second, the NAB's humiliation is just desserts for the biggest bunch of whores in DC.
See John Gorman's latest blog post to see more roasted Rehr. It's delicious.
Mel is running around the press half joking satradio is a MONOPOLY now that the ink is dry. Hook, Line, Sinker. Pump and Dump.
Earnings mean nothing this time. Unless, they are numbers for the past week! SiriusXM is an IPO, and as far as I am concerned, any data from the past has NOTHING to do with the combined company's future. Get Real.
Bring on the iPhone App!
I always enjoy watching a cocky-ass CEO gloat when his stock price is in the shitter. NAB may not have stopped the merger, but it doesn't take a genius to see what happened to satellite radio in the 18 months it took to get this deal approved.
FUCK ALL YOU HATERS THANK GOD FOR THE MERGER REGULAR RADIO SUCKS BALLS
The stock will drop as low as the blind, and ignorance factor of the minority
Guys it took 18months to bring the price down, its not going to shoot up over night. I think we can all agree that Alot of damage was done and the price should be alot higher at this point if they did in fact approve sooner. Maybe Mel would have implemented the same plan, who knows.
Patience...and this stock will put your children through college. The longs who say they are actually are long seem to be bitching the most. Hang in their guys. Trust the Jew.
Why is Melvin Alan "Mel" Karmazin not acting like a CEO of a company that needs mega direction and lots of work, and instead of this childish "I told you so" BS? Melvin Alan "Mel" Karmazin said himself when he was with Viacom/CBS he hated satradio too. It's time for the "them" BS to end and start worrying about US, that is if Melvin Alan "Mel" Karmazin really wants to make satradio viable and have any future. He's got alot of work to do, head down and do it, gloating only takes away class.
It will go up. If you are in it for the long haul you will be fine. If you dumped $10.000 two weeks ago hoping for a short hit... well you are stupid.. Its a big roll of the dice with two companies that never made a dime, that merge into one huge company that never made a nickel. Stop your bitching, stocks are like gambling.... Shorts=lose with the new company. Right now with this economy, I'm in bonds and CD's, and long on stocks.
The NAB made the argument for them. If the NAB truly believed it didn't compete with satellite, they wouldn't have fought against it. Why would they care? They didn't compete with them. Silly people. I would love to hear Mel's toast to the NAB and hear him thank them for helping get the deal through.
Why on earth do all you idiots think that the stock would soar overnight once the merger was announced? You chose, once upon a time, to invest your money in a company that had never shown a profit, and had shown no signs of ever doing so. Now both of those companies are one company, you should buy up the cheap shares if you believe this whole thing will work out.
Man, we have a lot of stupid people in America. Do the rest of us a favor: don't vote. I'm sure it was all of you who re-elected the worst President in the entire history of our country.
Can we get to a more important topic? That is, what exactly is the plan for an interoperable transition?
How are they going to transmit the same channels to older hardware? Are they going to do interoperable through HE-AAC, and if so, where do they siphon off the bandwidth?
Can we start asking some hard questions here?
I miss anonymous coward to kick around.. The NAB's blog fighter.. Here were some of my favorite lines he used.
1 - Satellite fanboy
2 - Merge to monopoly
3 - Ignorant fanboy
4 - HD radio... blah blah blah
5 - Government sanctioned monopoly
Don't forget:
6 - Melvin Alan "Mel" Karzamin
7 - You need to be educated
The NAB knew they were not going to stop Sat Radio so the only reason i can see is they had to do something to look good for the members.
The NAB i am sure wants Sirius as a member so the fight they put on was it done with Mels blessing?
"Guys it took 18months to bring the price down, its not going to shoot up over night. I think we can all agree that Alot of damage was done and the price should be alot higher at this point if they did in fact approve sooner. Maybe Mel would have implemented the same plan, who knows"
Cuse me Dave... Stock has gone from 9.00 in december 04 to 1.60 now .... 42 FOURTY TWO months of continual decline.
I'm done with sirius as a serice and stock.
I work for a radio station group so I admit that I'm a little biased against the merger, but lets look at the facts. True, NAB couldn't block the merger, but they did manage to make Sirius spend about $100 million getting the merger done, stalled it for over a year which punished their stock, paralyzed subscriber growth, and forced them to refinance their debt at very bad rates, and still got a few nuggets it wouldn't have gotten otherwise, like the FCC's promise to look at putting HD chips in satellite radios, and a ban against sirius locking up exclusive deals with sport, and sirius has to jump thru all the compliance hoops put in by Tate. Plus, by approving the merger the FCC's hurt its own case for limiting how many radio stations one company can own, and at least McDowell probably thinks he owes NAB one (don't care about Martin or Tate, they're gone soon). And don't forget, its better for radio stations to deal with a weakened sirius instead of google or some other juggernaut that might have bought XM out of bankruptcy. When you add it all up, maybe it doesn't sound all that bad for nab.
There are two of the minority, blind, ignorant, satradio fanboys now.. Fawn Liebowitz and Mat thanks for answering the call and proving yourselves. The truth must hurt.
Hey AC-NAB fanboy.. go fuck yourself. The deal is done. Now go break up clear channel, they are quite the monopoly themselves. Long live Sirius XM Radio inc.! Commercial laden old fashion terrestrial shit radio is on the way down.
You're right, the near monopoly Clear Channel has is a major reason behind the demise of FM. How a monopoly in SDARS is going to anything but bring the same results is a mystery.
I believe that Sirius-XM is going to be keeping an eye on the 8% of spectrum that they are being required to give away to public use and minorities. Some of these channels are going to be advertising supported and as such income producing. As I understand it you will NOT be required to have a subscription in order to receive these channels. If these channels start getting a sizeable audience and then bring in a bunch of advertising money it will be time for Sirius XM to reconsider the viability of its 100% subscription based business model. They might possibly make up a mix of 25% free with no commercials, 50% free with some commercials and the last 20% subscription based for such things as MLB, NASCAR, Stern, etc. The current income base has not been paying the rent lately. Various high end content will have their renewal contracts adjusted for the real world. At an average of $10 million a month Sterns takes the entire $12.95 subscription of over 772,200 subscribers just to pay his monthly contract amount and that does not included his bonuses. Add to that his staff's salary, studios, etc and the number of subscribers might get close to one million subscribers to support him alone. Somehow I feel that some big adjustments to expenditures are coming sooner rather than later. As an investor I am looking to make money, not support a charity. As one very famous politician said a a few years back; "Are you better off today than you were four years ago?"
As one very famous politician said a a few years back; "Are you better off today than you were four years ago?"
First of all why would any intelligent person listen to a politicians advice. They are all born millionaires and know nothing of sacrifice. Ask any immigrant worker if that rule applies. It doesn;t even apply here...Yea sirius had problems 7 years ago, and 4, and now even more. Its called sacrifice...the necessary sacrifice that must take place for this company and stock holders to prosper. The people who are upset about this stock are the ones who tried to jump in for the pop. The longs all understood the situation that things would get worse before they get better. As for the poor bastard who was in at 9...sorry, that was just bad timing. I dont know your money sitation either but if you dont sell you have lost anything.
Even if the Devil (or a Democrat) himself said it, it's a common courtesy to always give credit when quoting. The originator is not nearly as important as a the validity of the quote. To anwer my quotation, the anwer is; No, we are not better even with 8.9 million Sirius subs than we were with a fraction of that number four years ago. XM was not in any better shape prior to the merger. Something in the business model is not working as expected. It could be that cars aren't selling like it was expected, but that would indicate that XM was right and Sirius was not as it thought retail would be the ticket. The bottom line is that the ridiculously excessive generosity of contract amounts, salaries, huge bonuses and auto manufacturer subsidies-kickbacks has hamstrung satrad. They've got to back off on the mindset of ever increasing spending to an attempt to reach profitability and give some consideration to doing things somewhat different as what they have been doing has not been totally effective. No doubt the addition of another nine million subs via XM's merger is positive, but if that additonal income is squandered on more of the same then satrad will be in jeapardy. There are no more mergers left. A buyout will then be satrad's only salvation.
BTW, average price of my investment is $2.40 for some time now. I believe in the product and have done so for four years, but I am questioning certain aspects of Sirius's fiscal policy. It could stand a good bit of improvement. We'll see what happens in the coming months. I respect all opinions and other people may have a different opinion. We are all responsible for our own investments.
The make-believe satrad subscriber NAB shills that post here have to keep changing their battle with every dead end.
NO TO THE MONOPOLY
Until the DOJ proved there was no monopoly.
THEY WILL RAISE PRICES
Until Mel proved they wouldn't.
THEY HAVE TO GIVE UP THEIR LICENSE
Until the FCC said they don't.
Now the battle cry is DON'T BUY SATRAD STOCK
Imagine how much better terrestrial radio could be if they spent more time and money in actually improving their product, and less time trolling blogs. Hopefully when Rehr gets his pink slip, they will issue a few more for their phony blog commenter brigade.
Ahhh yes. Thank you for the awesomeness that is "Sirius + XM divided by Monopoly". YOu did your jobs well.
Terrestrial radio is going to have to pay for music.
Lots of IP's are talking caps on bandwith people use what is that going to do to on line Radio?
Paul in FL,
Okay fair enough, sorry for coming on to strong. But keep in mind we are still working out the kinks and are currently going through the sacrifice to later prosper. Shareholders are the ones sacrificing but if they remain loayal and patient I assure in time we will be okay. Post that quote in 4 years and we can all agree we will be better off.
FINANCIALLY we are in worse position. But from other aspects we are golden.
Market positioning (the start of 08 & 09 vehicles despite poor car sales...still talking millions)
Bandwidth/Resources/Tech (6 satellite)
Advertising (Did they even have advertising? Now they will save costs)
XM weather and siri Backseat (will be easier to expand this working as one comp)
Content (Best content anywhere...will not need to spend more, except to renew contracts)
SAVINGS (Repeate channels, Djs, Contracts, Equiptment, Advertising, Overhead, etc)
Ventures (Once they integrate networks in 9 months they can sit down with apple, microsoft, etc and be taken seriously)
As to the business model being flawed...I think Mel has more strategic moves up his sleeve not only to increase subscriptions but also to find alternative revenue streams. As subs go up, advertisers will be charged more. If they can focus their resources and put time into a flawless product, I think they can take back the retail market. Either way I am banking on sirius xm to find other forms of revenue aside from Radio subs.
Why is it the NAB fanbois can't even write their own name here? Why must they always be the Anonymous Cowards? It's a deserved name, but nonetheless, have a little pride in your flawed arguments.
Why don't you morons go do a remote out at a local car dealer for $250 and a hot dog.
"I am banking on sirius xm to find other forms of revenue aside from Radio subs. "
I've said it before, i'll say it again. Part of the spectrum will be opened up to free service. All of those deactivated radios in the world will pe reactivated and will recieve some free content. It will probably include everything that has comercials now and is on terestrial radio already such as news and talk/entertainment. Eventually, even some popular music channels will be added to get back listeners that like sat rad but aren't willing to pay. They hear comercials now on AM/FM so they'll be ok with comercials on Sat Rad. I don't think the subscription base will ever be big enough to maximize the business revenues. Subscription service will always be there for those of us willing to pay to not listen to comercials. But Sat Rad will have to expand the listner base by offering free comercial supported content to generate ad rev.
There is a desperate and off topic rebuttal of the minority, blind, ignorant, satradio fanboy.. Mat thanks for again answering the call and proving yourself. The truth must really hurt. Worry about Mat and stay on topic, "have a little pride in your flawed arguments.", we don't care about your opinion of what you think of fellow posters.
You seem to care, AC. Why don't you bring something substantive to this site for a change.
Ronman,
You aren't too far off the mark if not right on. I see where a number of Internet websites let you use some of their services free of charge, but if you want the really good stuff you have sign up for a subscription. Perhaps satrad could apply some of that same thinking to their marketing plan. It wouldn't hurt and I see where more people would get a enough of taste of it so as to maybe finally sign up. It will NEVER be 100% subscription based as a good many people are very frugal (not necessarily cheap) to say the least. The important thing toremember is advertsing whether on a free channel or a pay channel is revenue producing. Make as many channels revenue producing as is needed to make a decent profit. Advertisers don't mind throwing a lot of money at something that gives them a lot of exposure and sales. Don't knock it as their money is green like anybody elses. It would be a good start to making satrad a successful money making venture satisfying the majority of people.
I agree, Paul. I think they should run one channel for free, and it plays Hits on Monday, Country on Tuesday, Pulse on Wednesday, Alt Nation on Thursday, Jazz on Friday, Kids stuff on Saturday, and Classical on Sunday. Wash rinse repeat.
"Guys it took 18 months to bring the price down, its not going to shoot up over night."
None of you have mentioned that when a stocks drops 50%, for example, it takes 100% to get back to that point, again. The NAB could not stop the merger, but with all of the concessions and the stock prices in the toilet, the NAB won (plus, they have a chance to get HD Radio chips mandated and get Satrad to pay for it). Quite a deal, this merger!
Fuck the National Association of Broadcasters. You jerkoffs only care about one thing, screwing the customer and maximizing advertiser revenue. I'm sick of all the doublespeak about how vital you are to the community, when you do you damndest to shutdown any competitor, including shutting down a bill with your bullshit lobbying that would have enabled communities to create low power stations. You are nothing but money hungry dicks. How does it feel to get edged out by SatRad and the internet. How does it feel to be losing to the iPod. How does that taste? Bitter, hard to get down?