Satellite radio
I have been a Sirius subscriber for 15 months and recommended it to many of my friends and associates. Last year, I spent a lot of driving time in the western parts of Somerset county (New Jersey),where FM frequencies for New York and Philadelphia stations conflicted. At that time, the only FM radio station I listened to was WXRK (92.3 K-Rock). There were just too few FM programming choices available to me.
I have chosen not to renew my Sirius satellite radio subscription. There are more FM programming choices available to me now, partly a result of relocating to Piscataway and partly because some existing FM stations have changed format. But the most significant issue I have with Sirius is the degradation of sound quality. When I first subscribed, I would have ranked it "acceptable". I now consider it "poor".
Classical, jazz, and electronica stations on now sound like a 96 kbps Shoutcast stream, while Hits-1, Octane, and (of course) the demo channel sound great. When I first subscribed, this was not the case. I want to hear human voices naturally when listening to news or talk. I cannot justify spending over $10/month on a garbled stream of audio, no matter how good the programming is.
This is an issue of quantity over quality. Sirius can make more people happy by offering more content It makes business sense for Sirius, because the target consumer is not the audiophile, rather the radio listener seeking more content.
XM suffers from exactly the same problem. However, XM offers lower quality music programming and poorer line-of-sight satellite connections than Sirius. XM is also, unbelievably, more expensive. If you are in the market for satellite radio, this makes the choice between the two obvious unless you are a baseball fan or need the antics of Opie and Anthony.
Regardless of my disappointment with the audio quality, I feel Sirius has made a responsible business decision. In part because of Howard Stern's move, I am sure shareholders will feel some love by the time 4th quarter earnings are published.