I just got my renewal for 2 radios and it is $275 for a year. I know you can get different deals by calling to cancel, but I may just wait and see where this bankruptcy goes or how it ends up. $275 is more than I want to pay for a year of XM. I'd gladly pay half that. I guess it just costs too much to get satellites up in the air. One satellite is a half million dollar investment. Who knows how much it costs to get it up there. Quality has been going downhill, not the reception, but some channels have commercials now.
Despite the range of channel choices it's kind of the Muzak of whatever the category is. In fact I think XM owns Muzak or has an interest in it.
The reception is a lot better than FM is all. But then FM is fucking free.
We should find out more about the bankruptcy soon. They dragged out the fucking merger for months though. I just think they need a lower price point. You shouldn't have to call to cancel to get the half price deal. It's like all those supermarket cards I have stuffed in my wallet to get the regular price. Otherwise I have to pay tourist prices at my local supermarket. It seems like prices for products and services get more fictional everyday.
To launch such a satellite cost them half a billion dollars.
I bought Sirius for Howard Stern. His show has become shit since he no longer has a comedian on the show. He supposedly has a comedy writer (an unfunny ex-intern) but he no longer says anything funny. It's just bitching and complaining about American Idol and Jay Leno. He puts no effort into his show at all.
Howard does not work Fridays and takes 11 weeks of vacations off. He also had almost an hour of commercials during his 4.5 hour show. He is now also reading live commercials during Robin's news segment. Howard got a $80 million dollar stock bonus 6 months after getting there for reaching subscriber numbers and quickly dumped it while the price was high.
I had Sirius for almost 4 years since Howard got there. Their radios are shitty. I had to buy 5 different units in the 4 years to replace faulty antennas and power cords.
The last straw that made me cancel was after they merged and they said they would not raise prices. They added a music royalty fee of $2. Sirius is supposed to pay that for the music that they play. They also started charging $3 a month to listen online, which was formerly included.
Another part of the last straw was when they offered me a free radio when I called to cancel because mine was broken. The sent me a non working unit and tried to stall me to keep paying for the service. I returned it but they told me the unit was not in stock and to keep calling them to check when it would be in. Fuck that shit.
I wouldn't accept their service if it was free. If I want to listen to Howard I can download the show from a torrent site later in the day. I also found a way to listen to the show live through a Pirate Radio site. There is another way to listen to the show via a blog after 12 noon.
Sirius is an outdated product. Wifi and internet radio is the new medium that will lead to it's failure. The stock has been doing poorly. The only money they made was the hostile takeover of XM and getting rid of their music channels and office building in Manhattan.
Sirius XM is due to fail. The stock has been as low as 15 cents, at one point it went down to 5 cents. It's a product that can be foiled by clouds, trees or tunnels. Better to download the shows or music and listen on your Ipod.
The Opie and Anthony show is much funnier. It is laugh out loud funny. It's on XM but I download it from the torrent sites. Howard's next contract looks doomed. He shot himslef in the foot with wanting the merger now he has no other satellite radio company to bargain with. If he stays it will be for less money are less work. He has also become insane recently and said "I will piss on my audience if I want to".
