News and musings on Sirius, XM, DirecTV and the DISH Network.

Satellite slugfest: Sirius and XM Radio fight for pay listeners

“You’re in The Mansion with Johansen,” crows the rocker David Johansen, queuing up six hours of Friday-night serendipity - Mary Wells into Big Bill Broonzy into Bread - in a corner studio at Sirius Satellite Radio. “We’re getting our hip ticket punched.”

He has no idea who’s listening. No one reads him numbers or focus reports. It’s like the old days of free-form radio - only he’s working for the latest thing, a medium that is growing faster than cellular phone service or cable television did in their infancies

Over the last two years, Sirius and its rival, XM Radio, have spent $1.5 billion to secure talent and broadcast rights to sports in hopes of convincing listeners tired of AM and FM that the answer is orbiting overhead.

We’re witnessing a satellite slugfest, with each service constantly trumping the other.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, May 10th, 2005 at 12:49 pm and is filed under General, Satellite Radio, Sirius, XM. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.