AURAL INTERCOURSE

Thursday, March 13, 2003
Copyright © Las Vegas Mercury

Aural Intercourse: The case for satellite radio

By Mike Prevatt

There's this theater I go to damn near weekly. I absolutely love it. It's one of the nicest in town, it has free soda refills, and it's always playing at least four or five movies worth seeing.

Before I turn this into a movie column, let me say that the only thing I hate about this place is the same five or six commercials it plays before the previews and the feature presentation. It really irritates me, especially because I'm always in my seat early enough to see them all. Well, there was a new commercial last week, for Sirius satellite radio. And for the first time since this theater started playing so many commercials, I audibly cheered for a product. However, it seemed my whoops were being drowned out by utterances of confusion and unfamiliarity.

I was likely the only Sirius satellite radio subscriber in the auditorium--an easy feat, seeing as there are only about 30,000 of us in the country--and thus the only one excited to see the service finally being advertised in such a visible place. You see, in the rivalry between it and the other satellite radio service, XM, Sirius has been behind on every front--its launch, promotion, stock worth, automobile affiliations, you name it. Now, it has kickstarted a pervasive ad campaign, via TV, billboards, print media and now movie screens. It's called "It's On," and it's about time.

You'll have to forgive me if I sound like a company pitchman or a paid-off hack. I have been a Sirius subscriber for the past 10 months, and I'll shamelessly admit the service is the main reason I am so up-to-date on current pop music. This is for a few reasons. One, I want people hungry for quality music to be satiated. Two, it's genuinely fantastic, with 60 commercial-free stations playing every music genre imaginable, from turntablist-oriented hip hop and alternative country to world music and indie rock, nearly all in the free-form style enjoyed over the airwaves in the '70s. (There are also 40 talk stations, also without ads.) And three, I am not only looking out for you, but for me, too.

Sirius is a relative upstart, having formed in the '90s to give music the cable television treatment. Just last year, the service became ready to launch, almost a year after XM initiated its high-visibility campaign and service. Sirius is not expected to turn a profit until at least 2005 (though recent recapitalization efforts have made that goal more plausible), and it's not expected to garner 1 million subscribers until sometime next year. At roughly 30,000 now, it needs some serious hustle, and if it doesn't start attracting more people, there is a threat it will go bankrupt in a year or so. Which, unless some massive corporation buys it out, means no more Sirius radio. Which means I'd have to return to watered-down, ad-dominant broadcast radio, and that would make me quite bitchy.

The reason Sirius--and to a smaller extent, XM--have had trouble luring the masses thus far is the cost. Not that it's expensive, but we have enjoyed free radio all our lives, and the idea of paying $10 or $13 a month for it, after we buy the new stereo equipment needed to accept the satellite feeds, is hard to swallow. You're lucky to get someone to spend $13 on one CD a month these days. However, these same reservations applied to cable TV 20 years ago, and now more than 75 million people in the country pay for cable. This is expected to happen with satellite radio, too, if the enthusiastic responses of the communication and tech industries are any indication.

I have high hopes for Sirius, and XM, for that matter. I sincerely believe the music people should be hearing is being broken on these outlets first, without the oversaturation of your typical Clear Channel broadcast station. There are no focus groups determining that people would rather hear Faith Hill than Allison Moorer. There is no censoring of the material, which means Eminem and Marilyn Manson are heard as they sound on their albums. There is, apparently, very little, if any, corporate infiltration of Sirius. (XM has a handful of corporate partners, including DirecTV and Clear Channel, though it maintains it operates independently of its investors.) I can't say satellite radio is pure, but its anti-payola, anti-playlist, anti-commercial attitude, in this day and age, is nearly unheard of in radio, and it's refreshing to see the guard start to change. Or so we hope.

I sound as sycophantic as a Billboard writer, but Sirius excites me in the same way as any new discovery in music might, whether it's the recent Radiohead album, an unconventional hip-hop song that finds its way onto the charts or a fan-friendly concert festival like Coachella--all things you might expect a critic to write passionately about. Satellite radio seems no different. Check out siriusradio.com or xmradio.com and see if you agree with me.

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