SiriusXM has almost no sponsors to boycott and no FCC rules about indecent content. The 25+ million subscribers pay for the service and know what they’re buying.<\/p>\n
Recently, SiriusXM replaced their programming director who had been Mel Karmazin’s sidekick since the beginning. I wondered what this would mean for the future. We have our first major clue.<\/p>\n
Opie and Anthony are Howard Stern’s rivals, as they share a similar story. Before the merger, Howard Stern was the 900 pound gorilla driving Sirius sales and subscriptions and O&A on XM a bit later. They wound up on satellite radio following being fired by Infinity after doing a stunt on WNEW where they encouraged a couple to have sex in St Patrick’s cathedral while mass was going on – resulting in a huge indecency fine by the FCC.<\/p>\n
After sitting out their contract, they wound up on XM radio, initially as a premium channel and later rolled into the base subscription. After Sirius and XM merged, their show is still an extra charge option for Sirius subscribers.<\/p>\n
After Stern left CBS and went to Sirius, O&A eventually replaced him on the CBS “Free FM” network during its final days with a FCC compliant simulcast of part of their SiriusXM show. It didn’t work out.<\/p>\n
Anthony has just been fired following some incident where he says he was hit by a black woman at Times Square and he tweeted about the incident in an unacceptable way.<\/p>\n
O&A’s fans are called “the Pests” for a reason. This could just be a “radio stunt” to drive up subscriptions, but I tend to doubt it. Time will tell.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
SiriusXM has almost no sponsors to boycott and no FCC rules about indecent content. The 25+ million subscribers pay for the service and know what they’re buying. Recently, SiriusXM replaced their programming director who had been Mel Karmazin’s sidekick since … Continue reading