Dear Mel Karmazin – be my new friend and hear the music

Posted at March 12, 2009 |

With new-car sales down, Sirius XM Radio is desperately seeking new ways to infiltrate the airwaves. On Thursday, the company said it’s planning a new service that can be streamed on Apple devices and confirmed that it’s been discussing the possibility of bundling its service into DirecTV Group cable packages. The company has been evaluating several initiatives “to make the Sirius XM content and experience more ubiquitous.” I do not have an Apple device. I do not want ubiquitous. I want Willies Place back to the way it was.

Shares of the satellite radio provider gained 3 cents, or 21.3 percent, to 19 cents during Thursday’s afternoon trading session. Today you can buy six shares of Sirius, one share of Citigroup, or a bottle of water. Take your pick.

I was talking to a woman the other day who told me she was going to buy an iPod that would hold 300,000 songs. She might have a future with Sirius XM. Does she pay 99 cents for each song? A person can only listen to 480 songs per day, and that’s if they never go to sleep, let alone interact with other people.

Maybe I should give up good Texas Honky Tonk music in favor of Hip Hop Rap, strap my kids in car seats in the back seat, and turn up 750 watts of bass to guarantee they will be wearing hearing aids in the third grade. If it rattles their eyeballs loose they will be wearing glasses too. Then I’ll get a management job at Sirius XM.

Sirius XM Radio is desperately seeking new ways to infiltrate the airwaves. Here is a news blast for them: Find some niche markets and serve them well, otherwise people will turn on a free radio.

Sirius Xm seeks new direction under Mel Karmazin Here we see Mel Karmazin, head of Sirius XM. I don’t see hearing aids with dead batteries on Mel’s head. He doesn’t look like a guy that wears his baseball cap backwards, his drawers half way down, holding his britches a foot below his boxer shorts with one hand while he walks. I don’t think Mel ghetto-blasted his brain or his hearing to another planet.

I don’t care if Mel invented the free wireless radio toilet seat so everyone could listen to Sirius XM. Without good niche content Mel will go broke faster than Senator Larry Craig could get away from the bathroom police. I think it is a good analogy because Mel is flushing subscriber money down the drain right now.

Something is wrong outside the boardroom, below Mel’s level. People at Sirius XM are not listening. Maybe they are the ones who cannot hear. To be successful in business one must listen to their subscribers (customers).

DirecTV already carries XM satellite radio, and it was good. I listened to Willies Place at least 12 hours a day at work. I listened to the Gospel jukebox on Wednesday nights, and the Cowboy Gathering on Sunday mornings. I don’t listen to any of it now – because the shows and my favorite personalities are gone!

When the merger of Sirius and XM was completed Catfish was gone from Willie’s Place. The handwriting was on the wall. It took a few months, but soon Eddie Kilroy was gone too. The channel is still on DirecTV, but I don’t turn it on. It has nothing to do with Willie Nelson. It has everything to do with Sirius/XM.

As Sirius XM tries to get into user’s heads, Sirius is currently working to have its receivers installed in more used cars, it said on Thursday, and is also seeking to reach consumers outside of their vehicles. Sorry Bubba, you were reaching me before, and now you are not.

Management seems to come from the Sears, K-Mart, Circuit City school of human studies. Take something that works, break it, and then wonder where your customers went. Who is financing used cars these days? For that matter there seems to be something wrong with the economy, if management hasn’t noticed. Who is buying used cars these days? Is that the market you really want?

There is no guarantee that the government will prevent $5 per gallon gasoline again this summer. Maybe Sirius XM management thinks people will sit in their used car, enjoying music, Howard Stern, or Martha Stewart, even if they can’t afford to drive anywhere.

That makes as much sense as bundling satellite radio packages with DirecTV when I already have it on DirecTV.

Allow me to finish by sending another news blast to my new friend Mel: You aren’t playing anything exciting, new, or different, that would make me subscribe, and you ruined the one niche market that I liked. Now I have plenty of time to find out what “ubiquitous” means.