| sirius Satellite Radio radio
100% Commercial Free Music
SIRIUS offers 98 channels, and XM weighs in with 113. The variety of music is truly astounding, in every genre: pop, rock, country, dance, Latin, Christian, hip-hop, R&B, jazz, standards, world, and classical. The buzz is that XM has better music, with deeper cuts and fewer repeats, but "they" also say the SIRIUS signal is more high-fidelity and closer to the CD quality that both services strive for.
Sports
SIRIUS has exclusive contracts with the NFL and the NBA, while XM boasts exclusivity with Major League Baseball, NASCAR, and the PGA tour. Both have NHL and college sports content. The buzz gives this one to SIRIUS.
Talk and Entertainment
No contest. XM's Opie & Anthony just aren't in the same league with Howard Stern and Martha Stewart (no matter how odd their pairing might sound). Stern has been a one-man publicity machine for the last six months, appearing on dozens of magazines and TV shows touting the virtues of satellite radio.
It's been over a year and a half since my last column on satellite radio, and a lot has happened since then. Back then there were 2 million total subscribers between the two services, XM and SIRIUS. Now there are more than 10 million, and their numbers are growing rapidly. What's fueled this virtually exponential growth? Word-of-mouth and the cool factor, for one thing, as subscribers show their friends what satellite radio is all about: more than 200 commercial-free music stations between the two services, with artist and title information on the radio display, as well as a broad offering of sports, news, and uncensored talk and entertainment not found on "terrestrial" (i.e., regular) radio.
On the XM side, factory-installed, satellite-ready radios from GM, Honda, and Nissan seem to be a big factor in their not quite 2-to-1 lead in subscribers, as was XM's one-year head start in the market. But industry hardware data suggests that new SIRIUS subscribers are purchasing aftermarket receivers at a rapid clip, and SIRIUS relationships with Ford, Chrysler, and Toyota are starting to fall into place. For instance, new F-150s come with SIRIUS head units as a $195 factory-installed option, which includes six months of service and can be instantly activated at the new car dealer.
But satellite is not the only new technology in radio. Next month we'll look at HD Digital Radio and see how Clear Channel, Viacom, and the other terrestrial radio powerhouses are fighting back against this threat from the skies.
