# Panero Steps Down



## Nick (Apr 23, 2002)

XM CEO Panero To Step Down in August

XM Satellite Radio said Hugh Panero will leave the company next month. It was
expected that Panero would eventually depart his position, given the company's
proposed merger with Sirius and the leadership changes that would come if the
companies succeed with their combination. Mel Karmazin, CEO of Sirius, would
serve as CEO of the combined company and Gary Parsons, currently chairman
of XM, would become chairman of the combined entity.

More @ XMRadio.com


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## DonCorleone (Jan 29, 2006)

Hmmm, maybe that's an inside sign that the merger will indeed go through.


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## Steve Mehs (Mar 21, 2002)

How can it be an inside sign of the merger? It's the FCC and and DOJ that have the final say, not XM and Sirius.


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## DonCorleone (Jan 29, 2006)

Steve Mehs said:


> How can it be an inside sign of the merger? It's the FCC and and DOJ that have the final say, not XM and Sirius.


And you think their opinions, leanings, etc. stay within the Capitol? No way. The swaying definitely gets out there and I would expect that to drive something like this.


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## Steve Mehs (Mar 21, 2002)

As much as I hate them, the NAB (and various consumer groups) will still have to present their side. The NAB can be pretty per$ua$ive. So yes, in is my opinion this means absolutely nothing as far as the alleged merger is concerned.


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## Nick (Apr 23, 2002)

I tend to agree with The Don. Just reading the tea leaves, the smoke signals, and the
desperate, even laughable language of recent NAB press pronouncements, it does
"feel" to me like the winds of merger are blowing ever so slightly in favor of a merger.


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## paulman182 (Aug 4, 2006)

I would think customers would welcome a merger more than one, or both, of the sat radio services going dark.


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## DonCorleone (Jan 29, 2006)

FWIW, I think this merger is a no-brainer. If they don't let it go through, 1 or both of these companies is likely to go bankrupt competing with each other. There's no monopoly issue here, so it's the NAB and other ridiculous entitities protecting terrestrial radio. I wish Congress would focus on more important things like lowering my taxes.


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## Steve Mehs (Mar 21, 2002)

XM and Sirius can AND WILL survive on their own. What they need to do is stop the constant pissing contests with big names and big signs, XM and Sirius have proved to be great competition to each other. No way could they offer the great content they offer if their only competition was terrestrial radio. And No, the IPod is not competition here. In less then 6 years, satellite radio has over 14 million subscribers, this is an industry that was barley given a chance and now it have flourished.

I am 110% against this merger, and I’m 99% confident that it will not happen, in the off chance it actually does, I really really hope we can get another provider, Primosphere has regained interest in the market and hey maybe even WorldSpace. I had every intention, if WorldSpace ever launched their AmeriStar satellite, of ordering hardware and getting a grey market subscription somehow.


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## DonCorleone (Jan 29, 2006)

I disagree Steve, but I respect your opinion. As a stockholder, I support the merger as I think they're burning money too quickly (I hear you on the derivation from the pissing contest, but I think it would still be the case) and I think they/I will be better off financially in the long run.

As a Sirius sub, I also look forward to the day I get MLB games on my Sportster.

I'm also concerned that with the burgeoning of HD radio and the multiple channels and the NAB's ridiculous influence that gaining more subs will become even harder.

I guess we'll just have to wait and see.


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## Richard King (Mar 25, 2002)

> this is an industry that was barley given a chance and now it have flourished.


I'm alergic to barley, but that's beside the point.  They are VERY far from flourishing and eventually, one or the other will be gone. They can't keep losing (not loosing) money at the rate that they have been. I, also am a shareholder and bought in WAY too soon (too high) and am just hoping that one or the other will survive and go up enough to get my initial investment back. I have my doubts though.


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## Bobby94928 (May 12, 2003)

Richard King said:


> I'm alergic to barley, but that's beside the point.  They are VERY far from flourishing and eventually, one or the other will be gone. They can't keep losing (not loosing) money at the rate that they have been. I, also am a shareholder and bought in WAY too soon (too high) and am just hoping that one or the other will survive and go up enough to get my initial investment back. I have my doubts though.


If I were allergic (not alergic ) to barley I'd have to kill myself. I wouldn't be able to enjoy beer.  The first thing they can do to save some money is to get rid of the DJs. I just want the music, that's what it's all about for me.


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## Steve Mehs (Mar 21, 2002)

As a subscriber and not a shareholder, I view things much differently. I don't know how it is on planet gloom and doom, but it's pretty good here. ..Except for the slight possibility, that some idiots agreed to attempt a merger that would leave the industry with less choice and little innovation. Hurting both current subscribers and future ones 

- XM and Sirius have become common names. 4 or 5 years ago if you mentioned XM or Sirius no one knew what you were talking about now they do. Customer awareness is high.

- OEM deals have really helped the industry, buy a new car get satellite radio free for a year. Personally I know 6 people who have purchased new cars in the past 18 months or so that have come with six month or 1 year free trials, they all got hooked and kept their respective service after the free period.

- Satellite radio has a faster consumer adaption then cable TV, satellite TV, and cell phones. After the cell phone industry turned 5 years old there was all this nonsense talk about going under. Or DBS. Anyone remember the old ‘As The Dish Turns’ editorials on DBSDISH from 1997 or ‘98. Dish Network was called Deathstar, everyone predicted their demise. And they were all dead on, right? 

Both satellite companies will survive. Really I don’t care on how the companies do financially. I mean look at DirecTV, they did fine as an unprofitable company for a long time. And by fine I mean servicewise not financially. Satellite radio is completely misunderstood by the media. It used to be ‘who would pay for radio’ and now that 14+ million people pay for radio, suddenly the industry that was written off from the very beginning now it’s performing as well as hoped.  

XM and Sirius were founded in the early ‘90s as American Mobile Radio Corp and Satellite CD Radio Inc, respectively. It would be a complete shame to have all those years of planning and work be erased just because these companies aren’t performing well in the eyes of bean counters and numbers crunchers. Two satellite TV providers have done very well in battling cable, the weak had to be eliminated (Alphastar, Primestar, Voom) but they have done it. XM and Sirius are just about equally as strong and will succeed.

What XM and Sirius have completely failed at and have done a piss-poor job at has been advertising. Sirius should have used their Martha money and XM should have used their Oprah money and put it into advertising to show consumers why they should get satellite radio. On TV it seems like every 5 minutes Lifeguard Hepatitis C is telling me how crappy my cable PQ is and that I can get 974 HD channels from DirecTV, but I haven’t seen an XM or Sirius commercials in a very long time now.


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## Steve Mehs (Mar 21, 2002)

> As a Sirius sub, I also look forward to the day I get MLB games on my Sportster.


Let's step into an alternate reality for a second and assume this alleged merger actually occurs. Look at the 91 page propaganda piece put out a few days ago, XM receivers will have access to a few Sirius channels, Sirius receivers will have access to a few XM channels and that's it. You won' get the MLB on your Sportster, Richard won't get the NFL on his Roady XT. You'd need one of the dual service receivers, and then subscribe to XM programming. If the MLB is that important to you, pick up a Roady XT for $40 and subscribe to XM right now. Because in the end results will be about the same.


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## Richard King (Mar 25, 2002)

Steve Mehs said:


> - XM and Sirius have become common names. 4 or 5 years ago if you mentioned XM or Sirius no one knew what you were talking about now they do. Customer awareness is high.
> 
> - OEM deals have really helped the industry, buy a new car get satellite radio free for a year. Personally I know 6 people who have purchased new cars in the past 18 months or so that have come with six month or 1 year free trials, they all got hooked and kept their respective service after the free period..


Have you seen the retention rates on OEM installations? I haven't and am curious how that is going.



Steve Mehs said:


> - Satellite radio has a faster consumer adaption then cable TV, satellite TV, and cell phones. After the cell phone industry turned 5 years old there was all this nonsense talk about going under. Or DBS. Anyone remember the old 'As The Dish Turns' editorials on DBSDISH from 1997 or '98. Dish Network was called Deathstar, everyone predicted their demise. And they were all dead on, right?


They have faster adaptation becuase they are given away with nearly any new car. Satellite radio adopted the cell phone marketing plan (give away the product, make money on sub fees) much earlier in their product life than did satellite television. Of course they only adopted the cell phone plan with OEM product, not retail product. As to Deathstar, I recall the term being used in reference to satellite doing in cable if Dish and Direct were allowed to merge. I do remember one poster there though doing a nearly daily Tick Tock countdown to the demise of Dish. :lol: Whatever happened to him anyway?



Steve Mehs said:


> Both satellite companies will survive. Really I don't care on how the companies do financially. I mean look at DirecTV, they did fine as an unprofitable company for a long time. And by fine I mean servicewise not financially. Satellite radio is completely misunderstood by the media. It used to be 'who would pay for radio' and now that 14+ million people pay for radio, suddenly the industry that was written off from the very beginning now it's performing as well as hoped.  .


If you really want both to survive you should care how they do financially. If they don't do well financially it's guaranteed they won't survive. They both have a limited time before they run out of cash. Hopefully they both turn profitable before that happens. Directv (and Dish) had a great advantage over both satellite radio companies in that the average revenue per sub with Directv is huge (not hugh) in comparison to either satellite company.



Steve Mehs said:


> What XM and Sirius have completely failed at and have done a piss-poor job at has been advertising. Sirius should have used their Martha money and XM should have used their Oprah money and put it into advertising to show consumers why they should get satellite radio. On TV it seems like every 5 minutes Lifeguard Hepatitis C is telling me how crappy my cable PQ is and that I can get 974 HD channels from DirecTV, but I haven't seen an XM or Sirius commercials in a very long time now.


I suspect the current lack of advertising is related to their current financial conditions and the fact that the merger is hanging out there. They are probably waiting for either approval or rejection (and the Christmas season) to start another blitz. (maybe)


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## Tom Robertson (Nov 15, 2005)

I do not have a strong feeling about the merger, but I do have free XM in my car and in my directv receivers. I do like XM (likely would like Sirius as well), but the co$t outweighs the benefit to me and my lifestyle. We don't drive long distances, we don't commute to work or have even medium length drives. Yes, I would like to have XM for my cars and my boat, but the price is not worth it to me. (It is not a raw $ thing to me, just a "is it worth the price vs. other options" thing.) And I say the same thing about Tivo's cost structure outside of DIRECTV's receivers.

Cheers,
Tom


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## djlong (Jul 8, 2002)

If the receivers that were already in the field (all 15 million-plus) were flash-upgradeable, then I would support the merger because everyone's radio could be flashed to be able to receive "the other guy's" encryption system. But they're not so you're not going to have a 300-channel radio without having to buy something new.

I have a Pioneer unit in my car, a Sky-Fi, Sky-Fi2 and a PCR.


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## pez2002 (Dec 13, 2002)

Steve Mehs said:


> Let's step into an alternate reality for a second and assume this alleged merger actually occurs. Look at the 91 page propaganda piece put out a few days ago, XM receivers will have access to a few Sirius channels, Sirius receivers will have access to a few XM channels and that's it. You won' get the MLB on your Sportster, Richard won't get the NFL on his Roady XT. You'd need one of the dual service receivers, and then subscribe to XM programming. If the MLB is that important to you, pick up a Roady XT for $40 and subscribe to XM right now. Because in the end results will be about the same.


on my new skyfi2 will i receive howard 100 if the merger goes through cuz thats all i want from sirius

Oh yeah and im giving my steapdad my old roday 2 for the car he would love family talk he listens to that programming from 560WFIL in phildelphia the station has a crappy signal


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## Richard King (Mar 25, 2002)

I used to listen to WFIL for music MANY years ago when I lived in Levittown, PA. This was before the FM days. It was known as "Wiffle" back then. :lol:


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## reddice (Feb 18, 2003)

I am hopping everyday that the merger does not go through. First XM has way better Decades, Pop and Dance stations. Sirius formats in that are pathetic at best. Sirius has way too many of the same thing and little of other plus they keep adding one artist channels. Their DJ's on Sirius talk too much and their play lists are stale. The merger would be the death of satellite radio.


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## Steve Mehs (Mar 21, 2002)

> Have you seen the retention rates on OEM installations? I haven't and am curious how that is going.


No I haven't, but I would be interested in seeing that data too. I suppose it would be in the quarterly reports, but I've never actually read one, just looked over the highlights on Orbitcast. 


> on my new skyfi2 will i receive howard 100 if the merger goes through cuz thats all i want from sirius


Who knows, but my guess would be probably not. Stern is as premium as you get, I doubt he would be available in anything but the top tier. XM will not broadcast all of the Sirius content and Sirius will not broadcast all the XM content. If you look in the reports there's 11 XM channels that will be on Sirius and 11 Sirius channels that will be on XM. Price will be $14.99 or $16.99 depending on what else you have. No word on what the 11 channels are.


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## Richard King (Mar 25, 2002)

Reported today....


> Churn, or the rate of subscriber cancellations, rose to 2.1% in the latest quarter from 1.8%.


I suspect most of the churn comes from OEM installations since those people didn't make the proactive move of going out and purchasing a radio and signing up. But then, most new subscribers come from OEM so that would be expected. The current churn rate means that in a typical year about 25% of those who signed up will leave. They have to keep the new subs flowing in pretty fast to support that kind of churn rate.


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## Rankor (Jun 3, 2006)

Richard King said:


> Reported today....I suspect most of the churn comes from OEM installations since those people didn't make the proactive move of going out and purchasing a radio and signing up. But then, most new subscribers come from OEM so that would be expected. The current churn rate means that in a typical year about 25% of those who signed up will leave. They have to keep the new subs flowing in pretty fast to support that kind of churn rate.


It could also be partly due to the drop in sound quality. The compression on most of the stations makes it sound quality worse than AM radio. I hope that if the merger goes through it will result in more bandwidth for the audio feed due to the combined number of satellites in orbit.

Or the cancellation rate could reflect the fact that some of the newer cars and OEM car radios have an IPOD hookup.

Just my two cents.


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## Richard King (Mar 25, 2002)

> The compression on most of the stations makes it sound quality worse than AM radio.


Ah, I don't think so. If your's sounds worse than AM radio you have a problem with your receiver.


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## pez2002 (Dec 13, 2002)

if you have a roday2 your xm is going to sound like garbage 

but my skifi2 makes my xm sound great i can hear the bass pumping in my speakers something that never happend with the roday2


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## Richard King (Mar 25, 2002)

> if you have a roday2 your xm is going to sound like garbage


Only if you have a defective one. I had a defective Roady and returned it. The replacement is just fine and certainly sounds NOTHING like AM. AM has specific characteristics, and, while my defective unit sounded horrible, a properly working unit sounds nothing like AM. If you have one that sounds like AM return it.... fast.


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## Richard King (Mar 25, 2002)

Here's my previous thread about my receiver sounding like AM radio. Take a look, it might help.
http://www.dbstalk.com/showthread.php?t=67584


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## Steve Mehs (Mar 21, 2002)

Richard King said:


> Only if you have a defective one. I had a defective Roady and returned it. The replacement is just fine and certainly sounds NOTHING like AM. AM has specific characteristics, and, while my defective unit sounded horrible, a properly working unit sounds nothing like AM. If you have one that sounds like AM return it.... fast.


No, Pez is right the Roady 2 sounds like crap in comparison with newer generation XM plug and play receivers. Many people at XMFan have brought this issue up and when I upgraded from the Roady 2 to the Roady XT I noticed it myself. The Roady 2 just had very poor sound processing, first thing I noticed with the XT was much richer sound.


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## Rankor (Jun 3, 2006)

I have the xmdirect with sony adapter going to a sony gt610ui. This setup has an external antenna that sits on top of the car. For me the sound quality went down the tubes last year when they added all those new stations. The compression artifacts are what kills the sound quality for me. The bass is there but the highs and the mids suffer greatly. It is like listening to a 64kbps mp3 file. Also it varies by station depending on how much that XM decides to compress it. As far as my earlier comment about it sounding like AM is concerned that is only on a handful of the music stations.


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