For the past 5 years, Howard Stern has called Sirius Satellite radio home, with 100 million dollars to show for it. However, at the end of the year, Stern’s contract with serious finally comes to close and has yet to be renewed, as speculation is already underway on whether Sirius intends to re-sign their top billed talent. It raises the question, “What would Sirius look like without Stern leading the radio personality charge?” or better yet, “What would Stern look like 5 years removed from the shackles of censorship?”From a Sirius standpoint, 100 million is a lot of “straight cash homey,” in the timeless words of Randy Moss. At the onset of satellite radio, Stern was essential in bringing in new clientele and heightening the company’s profile. Now as more mature business, complete with a broad consumer base, Sirius perhaps can allocate such funds more efficiently, as opposed to spending such an exorbitant sum on a big name attraction. Sirius is past the point of making a splash, with Howard Stern serving as their main “Hey, look at us” calling card. Now, it might be time to use his salary to hire a host of radio personalities spanning a wider variety of viewpoints, culminating in a more complete radio experience. After all, that would make sense in terms of integrating strategy, considering the seemingly endless music genre options they provide. Would a few thousand customers most likely drop the service? Of course, but more likely as a means to make a statement than as a result of dissatisfaction with everything else the radio provider offers. There is still a better chance that a subscriber who originally signed up for Stern’s show will have become inundated by the overwhelmingly diverse listening options and commercial free programming, unable to break away from satellite even if they side with Stern in theory. The number of listeners who cancel will ultimately come nowhere near the amount of continuing listeners Stern first brought to Sirius.
This entry was posted on Wednesday, September 29th, 2010 at 10:00 pm and is filed under Radio News, Radio Opinion. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.
