John Malone’s Liberty Global has reached a deal with UK based Vodaphone to sell Liberty’s European Cable TV assets, which will net Liberty about €10 million, currently around $12 billion.
Speculation is ramping up that Malone will follow up on his offer to buy out some or all of the senior debt holders interest in the “new” Clear Channel. The $20 billion of debt is a huge number for a company whose primary assets are just pieces of paper, but in the big scheme of things, it isn’t a huge number if someone saw a way to run it for a profit.
It’s hard to see $20 Billion as anything other than a stifling amount of debt. I wonder when someone will see the advantage and profit in satellite radio and take on SiriusXM. Currently they have a monopoly. I have become a huge adherent to satellite radio – I want the cost to go down and competition would likely do that.
SiriusXM (ticker: SIRI on NASDAQ) – they are increasing subscribers and making decent money.
Of course, I am an older person, so maybe I am missing the streaming that millienials seem to love. Is that the future of “radio”?
I had had a subscription to SiriusXM for about 10 years but have switched to streaming and I am older too.
SiriusXM is great if you like to switch stations often. It had not been as user-friendly to do so on a phone, but Google just released “Google Auto” that turns your phone screen into big buttons so you can attach it to your windshield and change stations easily with applications like Podcast Addict or iHeart powering the audio in the background. With it, Google Maps is a great GPS that includes real-time directions based on current and projected traffic on your route options.
My experience is that for any type of music, there are several commercial-free stations streaming around the world. For new and talk radio, paying Sirius-XM will not get you away from the commercial break, so why not stream?
All the phone carriers have unlimited streaming plans now, including great deals for people over age 55. I took the money I saved when canceling SiriusXM and used it to upgrade my streaming plan with my phone company. Those deals may become more scarce if TMobile buys Sprint and reduces the competition for customers like you and me.
Sirius and XM had the only two spectrum licenses sold by the FCC, so it would require a radically different model – plus increasingly they have the critical mass of installed radios in newer cars.
For truckers, Sirius is great because it works all over the lower 48. Most drivers never wander far from home or are in major metro markets where the satellite distribution adds no value over IP multicast over cell towers. Directed beam 4G is why cell data is now too cheap to measure and 5G is on the way when the TV stations go dark
There is also a faux 5G that started late last year with T-Mobile and the LG V30- It gets almost 5G speeds by using many 4G data channels in parallel. There may be other carriers doing that with other phones today.