How long will it be before they tire of Howard Stern's dirty jokes?
How long before the banks have to stop loaning XM hundreds of millions to cover the losses?
xm is owned mostly by the car companies honda, gm and toyota.
regarding the receivers, I own one and the home unit broad casts about 300 feet which is probably too far.
the receiver plugs in and then any fm radio in you house can pick up your signal although your neighbor 50 yards down the street probably can too.
As a Sirius stockholder, this pleases me. As far as losing millions, satrad is still paying off their costs of putting up satellites. SIRI is expected to have positive cash flows by the end of the year.
"XM's net loss for the second quarter of 2006 was $229 million compared to a net loss of $147 million during the second quarter of 2005."
Here we have a company that's losing a lot of money but is bragging about the increase in subscribers.
In fact, not only is the number of XM subscribers increasing but it's costing the company more money to land each one. I could do this, and without an MBA from Wharton.
"For the second quarter of 2006, XM's subscriber acquisition cost (SAC), a component of cost per gross addition (CPGA), was $64 compared to $50 in the second quarter of 2005. CPGA was $112 compared to $98 in the second quarter of 2005."
Baseball is the only reason I would consider XM.
Music sounds absolutely awful on XM. Every song sounds like a low-density MP3 file. I'd guess Sirius is the same.
They'll lose one more subscriber in Jan '07 when NASCAR leaves XM and goes to Series.
I just signed on for a year with XM. I hope I didn't make a mistake by doing so. Local radio sucks where I live and I've really enjoyed XM's music selections.
I'll go with whichever has all the Major League Baseball games...best thing to happen to radio since the demise of the grotesquely misnamed 'Fairness Doctrine'...
I like XM but if they raise my rates one more time I'm outta here.
My XM at $13.85 per month is about at the peak of what I'm willing to pay. OnStar, which came on my Chevy van, is way over-priced at $16.95 a month. It's gotta go.
Once I got an iPod, I disconnected XM.
Satellite has much, much more to offer than Howard Stern (who isn't even on XM), and to my knowledge, XM has sufficient venture capital to sustain it until 2011. The cost of adding subscibers is indeed a bit high, but in the long run satellite radio is here to stay, and will certainly be profitable at some point in the future. New cars with satellite built in will begin to kick in in earnest over the next 2-3 years, and the cost per subscriber will drop dramtically then. I would not hesitate to invest in either company at this point.
I listen mostly to comedy, however. There are many days where a joke is far, far better than the news.
Besides, Channel 202 on XM is great!
However if both or one them picks up Mark Levin, I am sure at least one FReeper will shell out $$$ just to hear him and the rest of the lineup is just bonus....
XM radio, podcasts, and MP3 players, life is good.
GM only lost $3 billion or so, but it is balanced with the $4 billion writeoff, so GM is actually in the black for the quarter. Too bad about the $4 billion, but it was gone anyway. Net losses will resume next quarter and continue until this dog is in the ground.