Sirius Radio Losses Soar on $1/4B Payout To Stern

How in the world are they ever going to earn this back? Howard Stern will have to drop a lot of F-bombs for a long time, to keep his audience amused enough for Sirius to have anything to show for hiring him. I predict that the satellite radio stations will have to start running commercials eventually, to maintain investment growth. Then many people will turn off, like I did years ago when cable TV did the same thing. "See, you pay this monthly subscription, so you don't have to watch commercials like you do on broadcast TV!"

I'd feel like a first-prize sucker if I paid money to watch television. I'd also feel compelled to make time to watch it, if I was paying for it. I've been a little more open to the idea of satellite radio, though. Back when both XM and Sirius used to be more generous with the free samples on the internet, there were a couple of channels that I quite liked. I guess my favorite was their AOR channel, digging deep into the classic rock back catalog. My commute's not really long enough to be worth subscribing to it though, if they're going to have to run commercials.

Fortunately, in my area, there are a lot of radio stations, and a couple of them have enough variety to hold my interest. One is the wildly eclectic AM 1160, which plays just about anything, so long as its good. The other is Dave FM, which used to be the classic rock station, playing the same 300 songs over and over, but which has now branched out to compete with the challenge of satellite radio. And then there's my trusty set of cds, set on "shuffle". And there's always talk radio. And there's always blogging!