Glenn Beck to join SIrius/XM – my prediction has come true. Glenn will start on the Patriot Channel on Monday. This is a logical outcome of the President’s campaign to organize a boycott – on subscription radio (and cable TV), income is derived from listener/viewer subscriber fees. Commercial ad revenue is nice, but isn’t necessary. The “Insider Extreme” venture suggests he is ready to move to an Internet only show if it comes to that.
A little detail – GlennBeck.com is owned by Glenn’s Production company, not Premiere. That may turn out to be important in the long run – RushLimbaugh.com is owned by Premiere, and as such they have more influence over Rush’s future if the screws get turned to Clear Channel.
Another important aspect – Clear Channel (Parent of Premiere) was an investor in XM. Because of that, they have the rights to program some of the XM channels, but Sirius/XM doesn’t have the rights to stream them. Channel XM 158 (the channel that has Quinn and Rose) is Clear Channel’s XM talk station, and is only available to XM in-car subscribers, and not on the internet at all.
Sirius/XM is also launching a second Conservative talk channel “Patriot Plus” on Monday. No word if the FCC will force Sirius to add a second Liberal talk channel.
Part of the antitrust agreement for the Sirius/XM merger is that they “set aside” six channels on each service for “Minority, multiethnic” programming – but Sirius/XM will not program the channels, and won’t even choose who gets to. Almost 2 years later, there still has been no decision who will get to use those channels.