The President and COO of XM Canada, Steven Tapp, will be leaving the company on June 15th to "pursue other opportunities" the company revealed today.
John Bitove will continue to lead as CEO of the company.
"I would like to thank Stephen for his contributions during our major milestones including the licensing, creation of our programming lineup, launch of our service, development of our studios, build-out of our repeater network and our launch," said John Bitove, chairman and CEO of Canadian Satellite Radio Holdings Inc. "Stephen's skills in business startup ensured that XM Canada was launched successfully in November 2005."
Leaving to "pursue other opportunities" generally doesn't have a good connotation behind it. And considering how much Sirius Canada has bested the efforts of XM Canada, it's an understandable move.
The challenge to Bitrove is to find leadership that can push the company forward at the pace that it needs to stay competitive. Having big plans is one thing, it's executing them that matters.
i just find it a propos that the XM graphic up there is censored, given the recent Opie & Anthony situation. holy #*@!! indeed.
IMHO, XM Canada/CSR has never lived up to its potential in the Canadian market.
They made some dumb moves when they started; getting massive support from existing XM fans and then not giving back anything in return.
Increasing rates, charging for XM Online, and removing XMPR are more dumb moves. The excessive low bandwidth channels are just filler for the CRTC and we know it. Enough already with the comedy channels, do something more creative - English talk radio for Canadians like Radio Parallele?
XM aren't finding the right balance or creating a good buzz, so XM fans still turn to the gray market instead. And the XM Canada stock price on the TSX reflects this too.
Finally, an XM executive who does the proper thing in response to bad business decisions.
SMERT CER
I SAID A SMERT CER
Someone was going to have to take the body shot to address the stock and other items. Was just a matter of time.
I still don't understand where the promised multicultural channel went. XM Canada, prior to launch, said they would have a channel called Mosaic, with shows in many languages for various linguistic and visible minorities. Their website was chock full of letters written by Canadian minority broadcasters, expressing support for XM Canada.
Since the launch of the service, they appear to have forgotten about all these letters of support.
And I personally can't believe that they expect the CRTC will consider their current Canadian channels to be sufficient at license renewal time. For one, they are not meeting the expected standard of 60% music channels (from Section 79 at http://www.crtc.gc.ca/archive/ENG/Notices/2005/pb2005-61.htm ). Most of XM CA's channels are now brief loops that do not really constitute "24 hours a day" of "original programming."