A spokesman for XM and Sirius told TWICE that the companies will present more details on a pricing plan for satellite radio service under a merged Sirius-XM in the near future.
Bear Stearns analyst Robert Peck said in a client note earlier this week that he expects more concrete proposals in XM/Sirius' reply. He specifically cited proposals including "a la carte, price guarantees, block and rebate, reduced pricing for basic packages, as well as pricing for the 'best of both' [package]."
Analyst April Horace of Janco Partners noted, "Clearly the concept of lower price or giving a more basic package will be appealing to the FCC. Using the words 'a la carte' [programming] will be appealing because the FCC has been pushing the cable industry for that."
She continued, "So the question is … will the FCC make the conditions of approval so onerous that the merger may not make any sense?"
[TWICE]
Does anyone else think this tiered pricing plan will just end up costing us more? It reminds me of the tiered plans that Dish/DirectTV/Cable offers. Does anyone really subscribe to the basic plan? They put all the crap channels on the basic plans and for the channels you really want - they are on a more expensive plan.
I sort of agree but the a tiered plan is not really an a la carte plan. At least it better not be. The cable companies do that to make it look like they care.
Yes, it's a ruse. It may seem great initially, but with only one company, I'll have no choice but to pay whatever they see fit in the future. This will be no different than cable TV.
Amen brother. In every instance of tiered pricing comsumers have had to pay more for the same channels they were enjoying before. Tiered pricing also forces you to buy channels ytou don't even want. My local cable forces me to buy a sports package to get ESPN. I also get ESPN2, Classic, Outdoor Living, Sports Channel and some other shit sports channels. I watch only ESPN and for that I get to pay an additional $5.99/month. Great deal, can't wait to start doing it with my sat radio too.
I have a feeling it will end up something like this:
Tier 1: crappy pop music, classic rock, current edited rock, edited urban stuff, kids, christian, jazz and classical. Everybody gets this. $10
add ons to tier 1
Tier 2: adds music channels with naughty language. +$3
Tier 3: option of spanish. +$3
tier 4: baseball +$5
tier 5: football +$5
tier 6: NBA/NHL +$5
tier 7: News (NPR will be included free of charge) +$3
tier 8: Talk with naughty words. +$5 (could be up to $10 to help pay for howard)
total price for all 8 tiers: $39/mo. or get a discount of $5 when you get them all so you pay ONLY $33.99/mo.
and i base this on absolutely nothing.
I don't know, I don't think they will be charging extra for news stations because they have advertisements on them. I don't listen to the sports stations, but don't they have ads on them as well? I only listen to XM for the music and I consider anything with commercials to be a free bonus because there's no way in hell am I going to pay for a radio station with commercials. Whether it be sports, talk, news, whatever.
Do you think people will actually pay that much for satellite radio, tiered or otherwise? They'll price themselves out of business if they do what you have convinced yourselves will happen. Yes, a few diehards will pay more for the service, but they will lose more subscription revenue than they will gain if they raise prices. They've already sold the easy subscribers on the service, and the next wave of subscribers will be a lot harder to convince than the first 10 million. They will have to increase the value of the service (either by increasing content or decreasing prices) to convince those people to leave the free alternatives. Therefore I am not worried about the pricing - the only thing that worries me at this point is whether or not the FCC will impose restrictions that would render worthless the potential benefits of the merger.
Hey MarkS:
Where does C-SPAN radio fall into your pricing plan estimate?
Is it tier 8: Talk with naughty words. +$5 (could be up to $10 to help pay for howard)
or is it Tier 9: Radio without C-SPAN +$9
hey, i just made some numbers up for the hell of it. I dont have any idea if any of this will actually happen.
it is a lot to pay for radio if you were to get everything, and maybe the entry price would even be as low as $6. but if you have something like stern on his own tier, you suddenly need those channels to bring in subs to fully fund themselves. what happens if they charge $5 for stern and only 1.5M people choose to sub. they are now losing money on his programming. the only way to get around this is to charge for other programming as well. Stern may have attracted more people to sirius, but his programming doesnt do it alone. same with NFL etc. people who bought it because of these things my opt out now if they have the option.
Ive got another idea. $2 per channel per year for whatever you want to get. sports could be a flat rate for all the channels.
I came up with pricing plan.
Sirius/XM subscribers keep what they already pay for (new subscribers pick one service? dunno.), overlaping channels removed or consolidated are on both. All of the music, news(probably mostly overlaping, didn't look up who carries what), talk, entertainment, sports, etc. for thier brand: $9.95
Add the sports of the other channels for the other side $1-2
Add talk from other side $1-2
This alone would bring the price to $11.95-13.95. What people pay now or slightly higher, bringing in a lot more money pretty fast with 14M subcribers now.
A la carte: Talk, sports, music, news, etc. to be $4 per. Basically encouraging to buy the full package deals with more options. And I'd imagine that Stern, Sponge, Ferrall, O&A, Ron & Fez...all of the people that keeps the back and forth fighting on here going, would bring in a lot of subscibers at only $4. Then after people hear how other channels have this and that, they'd be likely to upgrade.
Like MarkS...I base this on nothing. As a lifer to Sirius, I'm not sure what's going to happen to lifetime plans yet.