XM Censorship

[usetosellhummer]

Ok finally my line of work comes up. I am a 25 year radio vet. I started in 1980 and yes we sill played Casey on LP and automation was still a pipe dream. Radio stations had full staffs and a owner could only have 2 stations. One FM one AM max. Long story short, Radio is near death and sat. radio with it's debt load and tied hands cannot survive either. Computer automation, corprate multi station owners and total disreguard for the product has done this. Can you guss how many people run (including jocks) an average station in markets outside the top 25? One to four max. new formats don't even have jocks or content, Jack stations that play what they want? Sirius has a chance with the huge increases made with the addition of Howard Sten and sports programming but XM is dead, now. Gm is all they have, and HD radio is a joke. HD recivers are far off and the cost is still too hight to plug and play on exsisting radios. Broadcast radio will go back to smaller private owners (Clear Channel) My group just went private this year. Local radio will work on more local services like traffic and events to survive and make ad revanue. Local radio will hub broadcast and shrink even more. Sat. can survive if the merge happens and the FCC approves local ad inserts. They have the ability to braodcast local content via booster transmitters and downloads to your reciver. The FCC will not let this happen due to the pressure from the NAB. So the only way they will survive is to cheap sell the subscriptions and start running commericals. Commericals are comming even more then before to XM and Sirius. A take over is likely but would still be years off. The Sat companies are now breaking even but will not shuck out any more big bucks to marth Stewert or Ophra in order to keep cash flow. There is always a chance they could go private if the right jerks team up to buy them. O and A are trying to survive in a changeing radio climate, they are a product of a group of broadcasters who have no understanding of what radio is now. There is no place for new talent to grow in a ever shrinking talent base. the Larry Lujack, Shotgun Tom's and Howard Sterns gone so regular radio will be milk toast boaring commerical filled dribble. Radio is the oldest electronic media with little or no changes since Marconi and the FM dial. The I pod is going to mutate again and the CD is going to die soon. Look for an all digital product coded so the RIAA can make money and to cut down copying. I just gota fighure out what a old Disk Jocky can do besides sell cars when the next gig ends.
Radio, most forms RIP