Just a few days ago, I wrote that I was noticing that radio station ratings seem to be less and less affected by baseball – I had attributed that to people watching the games on TV.
Up until now, XM subscribers had access to every Major Leage baseball game, but Sirius subscribers did only if they streamed the games using the Internet. Sirius/XM is the exclusive provider of radio coverage on the Internet, which is why most stations black out streaming coverage on the Internet – even if the radio station is owned by the baseball team!
This will make baseball available to another 8 to 10 million Sirius receivers – the subscriber has to pay the extra $3.50 a month for the Premier account, which also adds Oprah, NHL games, NBA games, Opie & Anthony, Indy car racing and 9 channels of college sports. You can’t get enough sports!
Also eroding radio’s sports audience is the increasing availability of video streaming of sporting events – as 4G cell access is more deployed and made more efficient, streaming video becomes a real alternative without having Cable TV – and you also have Slingbox that lets you forward your Cable TV signal over the Internet, and Aereo allowing receipt of over the air TV without a cable TV subscription, and feed it into Roku for later playback.
The world be a changing – and audio with no video will be less and less attractive – the one holdout is it is still illegal to drive a car while watching TV. In my case, radio’s PSAs are getting so annoying, when I’m driving, I have the radio off, and nothing playing at all, and just pay more attention to the world around me. The Golden Goose has been cooked.
When you say that Sirius/XM is the exclusive provider of MLB radio coverage on the Internet, does that mean that Sirius/XM provides the Gameday Audio Internet service that I subscribe to via MLB.com? No mention of Sirius/XM is made during the subscribing process. (As a fan of terrestrial radio I would rather not have my money go to the satellite crowd!)
I don’t think so – I had the same question when I read that. There is probably some qualifier that was dropped out in the news story – obviously the focus of Sirius/XM isn’t (yet) Internet streaming. MLB.com is mostly a video feed – maybe Sirius is the exclusive audio only service
I haven’t looked but believe they now offer streaming only subscriptions. Its a good deal if you like to listen to music and don’t like commercials.
They have some good talkers too. Mike Church is quite good and only on their conservative talk channel. Other shows are the nationally syndicated shows you will find on Art’s site here. When they go to a commercial break, Sirius/XM used to go to a promo to tell you about what was on their other channels. Around 2009 when they almost went bankrupt, they started to replace the promos with real commercials. The music channels are still commercial free and quite nice.
Things may have changed, but the maze of web pages ended up implying that there was an XM Internet streaming option, but if you tried to sign up for it, you got sent to the Sirius signup page – the only way to activate XM streaming was if you already had an XM account.
For maybe a year, I had all the Sirius talk stuff listed, but nobody was using them. I filled out a request to be an affiliate but all that did was generate a canned “no thanks” response, so I gave up and deleted the Sirius channels
I remember that. Back at that time, the two services had different channel numbers for the same programming and it was confusing. I had known stations by channel number.
Hmmm, I didn’t know the baseball was still this popular. I quit listening to baseball in the early 90’s
I wonder how much of pro sports is really there because of gambling
I didn’t understand what I was being told at the time, but apparently the “numbers” gambling in Pittsburgh was based on the official attendance figure at Forbes Field. A number like that is easy to manipulate…
“illegal to drive a car while watching TV” If you use your Android GPS in your car, you can switch to a window to watch Aereo. Aereo availability is based on the billing address of the credit card you provide, not where your car is.
There is a collision coming on this issue – will it be illegal to wear Google Glass while driving? What about the next generation that doesn’t look geeky, but just a regular pair of glasses? They already make hearing aids that are integrated into eyeglasses with the power and electronics hidden inside the frame or behind the ear.
I remember some talk about technologies to put a display on the dashboard that would project onto the window like a HUD and get rid of the instrument cluster. Change comes slowly to cars – as more cars become drive by wire, a lot of weight and the collision injuries from steering wheels could be eliminated by replacing the pedals and steering wheel with a joystick like device, but it would feel weird to not have that steering wheel and instrument panel obstructing your view.
Changes like adaptive cruise control and automatic collision avoidance may help some with distracted driving, and ultimately Google’s self driving car… Video requires an enormous amount of your brain’s attention – I would think it much worse than the people reading books or newspapers while driving
The hi-tech gadgetry is OK with me, but it will probably add more expense to already expensive stuff. What annoys me are all the ladies farding in their cars. With all the traffic accidents happening it is not a wise thing to do. I’m sure there are more guys doing it than ever before, but mostly it’s the women doing it.
Guys do it, they just don’t admit it
I think you hit it outta the ballpark this comment Art, “radio’s PSAs are getting so annoying, when I’m driving, I have the radio off, and nothing playing at all.” Once a station relies so heavily on PSA’s what need does the management have for a competitive sales force? My theory is the PSA’s are intentionally meant to drive as many people away from listening to radio, or perhaps certain stations even if streaming over the net. Then, once PSA ad dollars account for most of that stations profits the ad money will just stop. What happens then?
Switch to podcasts in the car, Nidster.
What if I do not own a car?
Androids and iPhones play podcasts. Whether your are “driving” or “putting”, either around in a car, or on the golf courses, they are both good solutions to avoid PSAs and commercials.
So, what if I’m shoveling coal into the furnace in order to keep warm?
Sure. You can use most phones to play podcasts. Same with PCs. While shoveling, I would not recommend ear buds, safer to use speakers.
Jerry del Colliano hinted at and I just read a story about NPR trying to figure out its future. The baby boomers are drifting off to the Rose Lawn Cemetary or generally becoming less involved… what they found is 46% of the 40 and under audience “time shift” their listening – aka Podcasting. They started noticing maybe 8 years ago that the begathons stopped working. If people are listening to Diane Rehm from a podcast, they aren’t trapped into having to listen to their local station ask for money – however it is the local stations that pay for the production on the shows (with some money coming from corporate sponsors). The halcyon days of Public Radio just paying themselves million dollar salaries and producing no local content are fading fast.
When ObamaCare and the Affordable Health Care Act takes full affect and begins sucking mega dollars outta the ‘youth’ of America things will change.
“Hey, dad, hey mom!!! Can you help me make my payment to the Feds in order to keep ObamaCare and the Affordable Health Care Act off my butt? And, outta my bank account?”
It’s so comforting to know our ‘youthful’ citizens are going to pay for the ‘old folks’ health care.
Not just youthful. The single young men will be paying for the healthcare of the the menstruating/ovulating women, especially those that are having children.
Strange they don’t object to this and to paying for the older people when both the older people and younger women have the single young men pay more than them for auto insurance.
It is similar to Social Security / Medicare where men put in the same rate as women, but women collect for more years.
” The halcyon days of Public Radio just paying themselves million dollar salaries and producing no local content are fading fast.” They should. They add little value that an ebay-like exchange of program would not provide. Offer the programming and see if anyone is interested.
It is the old top down command and control versus bottom up, free market. It is Chaos versus Control, Chief.
When chaos and control join forces, be very worried
Especially when they are in bed together together under the Dome of Silence.
Cone
“Would you believe ” that was supposed to be a secret?
“Wpuld you believe” I had intentionally changed the name for security purposes?
lol