Tag Archives: XM Radio

RadioIowa.com

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My next “small histories” project will be an Internet timeline showing when and how the company I worked for viewed and used this new technology. We registered our first domain (Learfield.com) on August 30, 1995 but didn’t do much with that (corporate) site. In July of 1996 we created a site for one of our news networks (Radio Iowa) but I don’t recall what kinds of content we were posting in those early days.

By November of 1999 we had gotten the hang of things and were putting up a lot of news (text and audio). The Iowa Caucuses pulls lots of attention to the state every four years and our network created a feature called Campaign Countdown. Our website made it possible to extend the life of the stories we fed via the radio network and reporter O. Kay Henderson cranked out a LOT of stories and interviews, all of which went online.

As we moved and updated servers and software, much of this content was lost. Or so I thought. While poking around on the Internet Archive WayBack Machine this weekend I found the Campaign Countdown reports.

The design of the website is nothing to write home about (that’s on me) but he history is real and — thanks to the Internet Archive — preserved. (I made a donation and hope you will, too). From this screenshot (partial) of our Affiliates page and you can see that about half of the stations had websites in 1999.

In my experience, radio stations were slow to embrace the Internet. There were a lot of reasons for this. Some good and logical, some not. Most of the programming on small market stations was music and licensing and technical issues made it impractical to “stream.” I’m not sure we had that word in 1999. And why, many station managers asked, should I go to the expense and effort of creating a website when everyone we care about (advertisers and listeners) can hear our programing on the radio? Duh. And nobody was going to listen to music on a computer. (iTunes, the iPod, and XM Radio came along in 2001. Podcasting in 2004)

Chipotle FM

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I eat at Chipotle’s a couple of times a week. On Friday I realized I was bobbing my head in time with the song coming from the restaurant sound system. Didn’t recognize the song or the artist. Thinking back, it occurred to me the music there was always to my liking. So I asked Google “do all Chipotle’s restaurants play the same music?” and found the answer in a story at Businessweek (yes).

Chris Golub the founder and sole employee of Studio Orca which “creates customized playlists for restaurants tired of putting their dining atmosphere in the hands of Pandora or Sirius XM Radio. His job consists of researching music, discovering bands, and asking questions such as, “Would you rather hear folky banjo music or classic Motown as you eat your steak burrito bowl?”

“Golub runs Studio Orca out of his spacious apartment in a Brooklyn high-rise. There he spends 8 to 10 hours a day researching music for Chipotle, which lets him play anything he wants. “I’m looking for songs that make you want to dance around your kitchen in your socks and underwear before you’ve even had your second cup of coffee,” he says. “Not many songs can do that.” Golub listens to about 500 songs before he finds one that will work.”

“Chipotle’s 1,500 stores all play the same music. […] Four times a month he loads up his iPod with 15 to 20 new tracks and goes to a restaurant in Manhattan’s Chelsea neighborhood to see how they sound in the store. Once a month he sends the updated list to Mood Media, formerly known as Muzak, which then streams the mix over the online service Rdio and into every Chipotle store.”

Rejecting evolution

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Jonathan Dudley is the author of Broken Words: The Abuse of Science and Faith in American Politics

“…creationism has failed to provide an alternative explanation for the vast majority of evidence explained by evolution.

It has failed to explain why birds still carry genes to make teeth, whales to make legs, and humans to make tails.

It has failed to explain why the fossil record proposed by modern scientists can be used to make precise and accurate predictions about the location of transition fossils.

It has failed to explain why the fossil record demonstrates a precise order, with simple organisms in the deepest rocks and more complex ones toward the surface.

It has failed to explain why today’s animals live in the same geographical area as fossils of similar species.

It has failed to explain why, if carnivorous dinosaurs lived at the same time as modern animals, we don’t find the fossils of modern animals in the stomachs of fossilized dinosaurs.

It has failed to explain the broken genes that litter the DNA of humans and apes but are functional in lower vertebrates.

It has failed to explain how the genetic diversity we observe among humans could have arisen in a few thousand years from two biological ancestors.

“…the belief that scientists can discover truth, and that, once sufficiently debated, challenged and modified, it should be accepted even if it creates tensions for familiar belief systems, has an obvious impact on decisions that are made everyday. And it is that belief Christians reject when they reject evolution.

In doing so, they’ve not only led America astray on questions ranging from the value of stem cell research to the etiology of homosexuality to the causes of global warming. They’ve also abandoned a central commitment of orthodox Christianity.”

 

New tech continues to gnaw at radio use

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That’s just one of the findings in the latest State of the News Media annual report from the Pew Project for Excellence in Journalism

“Fully 236 million Americans listened to at least some radio in an average week in the fall of 2009, a number that has been basically static for the past five years, and news/talk/ information remains among the most popular formats. NPR’s audience in 2009 rose slightly, up 0.1%, from 2008. But new technology is encroaching on the amount of traditional radio use. More than 4 –in 10 Americans now say they listen to less terrestrial radio due to iPod/MP3 use, and nearly 1in 3 now say they listen to online radio.”

Traditional broadcast radio experienced an 18% drop in ad revenue in 2009 compared to 2008. Internet and mobile radio revenues are growing (a projected 9.4%), but they do little to alleviate the pressure – counting for less than one fortieth of total. In satellite radio, SiriusXM in 2009 increased its revenue 3.7%, compared with a year earlier, to 2.5 billion compared to 2008. The company, however, both before and after the merger, has continued to report net losses in each of the last three years. In 2009 SiriusXM posted a net loss of $441 million.

The number of stations identified by Arbitron as news/talk/information rose in 2009 to 1,583, up from 1,533 in 2008. This category is broadly defined and includes a large amount of talk programming. But all-news stations make up a much smaller category. In 2009, there were just 27 commerical stations around the country that listed themselves as all news, down from 31 the year before. And even here the label is self-defined and may include talk or other less news-oriented programs. In commercial radio, local all-news stations now tend to be limited to only the largest markets.

Search “cancel xm radio”

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I cancelled my subscription to XM Radio a couple of years ago and it was such a hassle I shared my experience here. That post continues to generate comments and Google juice. First, the latest comment:

“Even though my credit card expired, they continue to send me bills. I have called numerous times to cancel but they refuse to do it. Instead, they continue to bill me through the mail and call relentlessly for the money. I am on hold now for at least 45 min. This is a problem that every XM subscriber should be aware of.”
How do these lost souls find there way to my obscure little post? Google search “cancel xm radio”

More than 10 million search results and the 2nd one (right after the company FAQ page) is a bunch of folks with horror stories about the company.

Mel Karmazin interview: “Fucking with the magic”

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Mel Karmazin is the CEO of Sirius Satellite Radio. Before that he was head of CBS Radio. For most of his career he has been known as a “Wall Street darling” for his ability to drive up the price of his various companies’ stock. Don Imus frequently referred to him as the Zen Master. Let’s just say he knows a lot about radio and advertising. I was struck by his description of advertising and frank assessment that Google was “fucking with the magic.”

“I loved the model that I had then. At that point I had… I was the CEO of  CBS and I had a model where you buy a commercial… if you’re an advertiser you buy a commercial in the Super Bowl and, at that time, you paid two-and-a-half million dollars for a spot and had no idea if it worked. I mean, you had no idea if it sold product… did any good… I loved that model! That was a great model! And why …if I can get away with that model… if I’m in the business where I can sell advertising that way, why wouldn’t I want to do it?

No return on investment. And you know how everybody looks for return on investment? We had a a business model that didn’t worry about return on investment and then here comes Google. They screwed it up. They went to all these advertisers and said, we’ll let you know exactly what it is.”

Oooh. Reminds me of the old saw, “I know that only half of my advertising works, I just don’t know which half.” The full interview is worth a watch and confirmed my feeling that a real sea change (in advertising) is taking place.

XM Radio burning up on re-entry

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This post from a year ago is still getting comments. The latest from “Will”:

“Just canceled. Used the corporate customer relations number. XM had my account all screwed up. They deactivated my account and would not waive the $14 reactivation fee. I asked if they could not or would not. They said they could do it, however, go %^&$ yourself. (not quite in those terms) I’ve been with them since inception and had up to 5 radios at one time. Kept canceling a radio every time they raised the family plan prices. Very short sited company. At least I saved a few hours on hold finding this number on this blog.”

My little post is 4th result of almost 98,000 search results. And all of the comments are in this vein. Doesn’t this scream that the company knows they won’t make it and have adopted a scorched earth strategy?

Hometown Radio

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A long-time radio pal shared this item from AllAccess:

DELMARVA BROADCASTING adds an FM partner for Talk WICO-A/ SALISBURY- OCEAN CITY, MD, flipping WXMD (MAX FM)/POCOMOKE CITY, MD to Talk as WICO-FM and installing separate programming from the AM side. The WICO-FM calls move from 97.5, which changes to WKTT, but retains its Country format and CAT COUNTRY slogan.

After a 5-6a simulcast of “AMERICA IN THE MORNING,” the FM carries syndicated QUINN AND ROSE, PREMIERE’s GLENN BECK and RUSH LIMBAUGH, TALK RADIO NETWORK’s JERRY DOYLE, MICHAEL SAVAGE, and RUSTY HUMPHRIES, and then simulcasts WESTWOOD ONE’s JIM BOHANNON and PREMIERE’s “COAST TO COAST AM” with GEORGE NOORY. Weekends feature music programming.

The AM side is carrying DIAL GLOBAL’s MICHAEL SMERCONISH, TRN’s LAURA INGRAHAM, DIAL GLOBAL’s NEAL BOORTZ, syndicated DAVE RAMSEY, DIAL GLOBAL’s CLARK HOWARD and TRN’s MICHAEL SAVAGE. Weekends include “best ofs” from LIMBAUGH, HOWARD and BOORTZ along with the syndicated KIM KOMANDO, CIGAR DAVE, TAMMY BRUCE, and CAR AND DRIVER shows.

My pal estimates that four major network syndicators provide 95% of programming on 80% of all talk stations in the country. Just a guess, he says, but not far off.

stitcher: “Your information radio”

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The idea behind stitcher is simple. Organize your favorite podcasts and listen to them all together, in the order you want. It seemed more appealing as an iPhone app than on the desktop. (Like so many things). This is what Jeff Jarvis calls “be the platform, not the commodity.”

When our local news radio station switched from CBS to Fox, I really didn’t have a source for national news (after dropping XM some months ago). And I just never seemed to be in the car at the top of the hour.

With stitcher, I select from a variety of news (or other genres) sources and stack them in the order I want to hear them. And stitcher will email or txt me when something updates.

I can really program my own radio station now.

A feature I’d like –but didn’t find on the website– is the option of adding a local or state newscast to my line-up. You can submit a podcast and hope the stitcher folks add it but we’ll have to see how that works.

If I were programming a local station –or even a state news network– I think I would produce at least two special newscasts each day, designed just for podcasting. I’d have one online by 6 a.m. (local time) and the other by 4:30 p.m. I’d probably keep them in the 5 min or less range.

I’d do my best to get stitcher to add them to the lineup while promoting the podcast on air to the local audience.

Here’s something else I might try…

I’d create a KXYZ News Twitter page and blast out any and ever nugget of news I could find. From any news source. Local newspaper, TV station, news releases, blogs… wherever. And once an hour I’d link my tweet to a 2 min audio news summary. With a reminder that more news can be found on our website.

I think the real challenge for MSM is to stop thinking in terms of what is best for us and ask what would be interesting or useful to those formerly known as The Audience. Only then can we begin to reinvent ourselves for the future that is already here.

PS: And one more thing. If I was one of the growing number of reporters (print, radio or TV) currently out of work, I’d use some of my spare time to produce the podcast described above. You don’t need a printing press or studios or radio/TV transmitters or towers. You need a laptop and a camera and a smart phone. And some imagination. Bet you won’t be without a job for long.

On hold waiting to cancel XM Radio

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I’m writing this while on hold for an XM Radio “customer service” representative. My first call was answered by a gentleman who could not figure out how to pull up my account. I gave him everything but my gene sequence. We finally gave up and I called back later.

This time I spoke with a lady who is progressing very nicely with her English lessons. I explained that I wanted to cancel my service. Nothing wrong with it, I’m just not using it enough to justify the $13/month. I told her to check the iPod box on her screen.

She insisted she couldn’t deactivate my account. I would need to speak with XM’s “Deactivation Department” (can’t be good when you have a special department). That was 15 minutes ago and I’m still listening to some depressing jazz channel.

For the record, I tried to cancel on the XM website. Never found a page or link for that little chore. Which makes me conclude you can tell a lot more about a company or service by how easy they make it cancel, than by ease of sign-up.

Wouldn’t it make more sense to quickly route calls like mine to someone with enough savvy (and English) to save the subscription? Maybe offer a cheaper or better plan? Or just fix a problem if there is one?

UPDATE: After more than two hours (over three calls) of Hold Hell, I went to Plan B. Canceled the MasterCard XM hits every three months. I got the card for just this eventuality. A little hassle updating the few services I had on that card but well worth it. PS: Seems like I’m not the only one getting this little dance.

If anyone at XM Radio is reading this… I probably owe you for a few days or weeks service. Since the card is cancelled your best bet is to call my Customer Service number (1-800-FUCKYOU). We’re experiencing unusually long hold times because we don’t give a shit how long you have to hold. But the wait will be pleasant because I’ve plugged in my iPod and set it to shuffle.

UPDATE: So I post my little rant on my lunch hour and it’s now 3 p.m. Just did a Google Blog Search for “xm radio” and there it is. #3 of 135,000+ results.

Blogsearch

UPDATE: 2/16/09 – Following a number of comments on this post, I went back to the XM website to look for the number some say they found there. And found it with one click under YOUR ACCOUNT. I can’t swear I didn’t miss that during the half hour I searched the site. But I’d wager $100 if there were a way to do so.