Thursday, February 09, 2006

Is this any way to build an empire?

Apparently XM and Sirius have both secured exclusive Subaru deals. Apparently XM will be available in the Legacy and Outback while Sirius will be avalable in the Forrester and Outback Sport. How fucked up is this? Say I want Sirius and I'm in the market for an Outback, well I'd have to buy only the Sport model to get Sirius built in. Or else I'll just have to install my own reciever.

My solution is for both XM and Sirius to get together and as a team, get Sirus and XM put into all new cars instead of attempting to one up each other and sign "exclusive" deals with car makers. When will they figure out that it's not the recievers but the content? It's kind of like HBO and Showtime, I can get them both on Comcast but how messed up would it be if Comcast only carried one and the other I'd have to get Directv for?

Why not get smart and get out of the reciever business entirely and focus on content? There is really no need to expend capital on these insanse deals.

Let the market develop a reciever that can handle both signals (they are different signals) and let the consumers decide which service (or both) they would like. I would totally pay an extra 2-3 dollars a month for Air America (only on XM) in addition to Sirius, and I'm sure XM people would gladly pay an extra 5-6 dollars a month for Howard Stern (well the ones who like his show, of course).

The satalite guys are thinking that we are a bunch of dumb consumers and won't bother to get a different satalite service if one is in our car alredy.. "satalite is satalite isn't it?".. actually now I get it.. nevermind...

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