Karmazin: Ask Not What Sirius Can Do for You; Ask What You Can Do for Sirius
by John Paczkowski
Posted on December 8, 2008 at 9:00 AM PT
With some shareholders already echoing a 24/7 Wall St. call for his ouster, Sirius XM (SIRI) CEO Mel Karmazin would do well to temper his remarks about the troubled satellite radio company’s programming lineup a bit. Certainly, comments like those Karmazin recently made at the Reuters Media Summit aren’t winning him support among subscribers irked over the loss of a favorite channel or three, even if there allegedly is a “best of breed” channel to replace them. “We’re going to pick the best channels,” Karmazin told event attendees. “We’ve gotten hundreds of people who hated it and claimed they were going to cancel. So we’ve analyzed all the cancellations since the rationalization…. If we took the most aggressive number of people who canceled and we take that away the $120 a year they pay, it doesn’t get to a $1 million as compared to the significant amount of cost savings as a company that needs to make money…. You as a subscriber, though you may miss your channel, need to make sure we make money because you want us to be around so we can invest in programming and we can provide you with all these services.”
In other words, subscribers who’ve lost a favorite channel should continue to pay a monthly fee to Sirius so that it can continue to not provide them with that channel.
Not exactly the sort of reassurance you’re looking for if you happen to be, say, a fan of “Bubba the Love Sponge” who’s concerned that the company may allow the talk show host’s contract to expire, but that’s the only one Sirius seems to be offering for now.
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Comments
Another in the myriads of negative arcticles that again… shows no basis in fact. The many improvements made so far, are obvious to any satellite listener. Well done Siri-Xm. Keep up the good work!
Posted by Bob Ross at December 9th, 2008 at 5:54 amThis is just another example of Mr. Karmazin’s screw you attitude towards subscribers. Where was he when they were giving multi-million dollar guarantees to people with zero radio experience? How about we eliminate Oprah, Martha and Jamie Foxx. Then we could possibly afford to program some variety in our music package.
http://www.SiriuslyScrewed.com
Posted by kelly krimson at December 9th, 2008 at 10:53 amWhat I want to know is if Howard Stern is going to continue getting $80 million a year when his contract expires in 2010 if the stock price for Sirius is still hoverning around where it is now (or worse).
Posted by Ron Mwangaguhunga at December 9th, 2008 at 12:22 pmMel Karmazin wants nothing more than to line his pockets and those of his cronies without regard for the shareholders of Sirius. At the next stockholders meeting he should be ousted as CEO as he has done nothing but engineer the downward spiral in the rpice of this stock.
Posted by Karl rite at December 9th, 2008 at 1:49 pmI had 4 radios on XM and Sirius, and I canceled. That is over $500 a year. They kept all the worst stations and kept the worse. If they have the same channels, why have XM and Sirius?
Posted by Tom Peric at December 10th, 2008 at 12:09 pm