(Radio Passioni) – L’altro giorno mi scrive l’amico e lettore Fabrizio, “Hamlet”, insomma, l’autore di Technosoc, il notevole diario online sulle tecnologie e la comunicazione, scritto tutto in inglese. Sul NYT, il New York Times, mi dice Fabrizio, c’è un’intervista con Karmazin, il capo di Sirius XM. Me la sono letta soltanto adesso e sì, è una bellissima storia, non proprio una intervista domanda-risposta, ma un lungo reportage sulla difficile situazione finanziaria dell’operatore satellitare.
Un reportage che prende spunto da un personaggio della radio molto famoso, negli Stati Uniti, molto più famoso del nostro Fiorello. Tempo fa, Howard Stern, il grande conduttore radiofonico celebre per il suo linguaggio diretto e sboccato, ha fatto sapere che nel 2010, alla scadenza del contratto che lo lega ancora a Siius XM potrebbe decidere di ritirarsi, di non tornare più in radio. E l’autore del pezzo sul New York Times paragona Stern a Jey Leno, altro celebre conduttore (questa volta televisivo), che recentemente ha deciso di prolungare il contratto con la NBC. Scegliendo Sirius Howard ha incontrato una pentola di lingotti d’oro ma, scrive Tim Arango, ha perso molta della visibilità che aveva sulla radio terrestre. L’articolo prosegue analizzando, anche insieme a Karmazin, le possibilità future per un operatore (e una tecnologia) che devono trovare il modo di coprire un debito da nazione africana. Il fallimento, afferma Karmazin (che sembra più un giocatore di poker che un amministratore delegato), è una eventualità possibile ma improbabile. «Uno deve giocare con le carte che ha in mano. Quelle che mi hanno servito non mi piacciono. Ma le giocheremo tutte.»
Satellite Radio Still Reaches for the Payday
By TIM ARANGO Published: December 26, 2008
DID you hear what Howard Stern said the other day? Neither did we. But we read about it on a blog. Mr. Stern, the ribald radio jock who once commanded attention with each off-color utterance and obscene joke, mused recently on the air that he was thinking of retiring when his contract expires in two years. “This is my swan song,” he said.
Back in the day when Mr. Stern was on free radio and had an audience of 12 million, that remark would have cascaded through the media universe. But by switching to satellite radio three years ago, Mr. Stern swapped cultural cachet for big money.
Then — poof! — Mr. Stern all but disappeared. Even Jay Leno, during a recent interview with The New York Times about his decision to stay at NBC to host a prime-time show, cited Mr. Stern as an example of the dangers of obscurity.
“On radio, Howard to me was a populist. The truck driver, the average guy would listen in the cafe, the truck, the old car that’s 50 years old and still has an AM radio,” said Mr. Leno in the interview. “But I don’t hear him quoted anymore. People don’t say: ‘Hey, did you hear what Howard said today?’ ”
Yet Mr. Stern’s retirement chatter did get one group talking: investors fretting over the fate of Sirius XM Radio, the satellite radio company that has been Mr. Stern’s home for the past three years.
Today, five months after regulators approved a merger of Sirius and XM, satellite radio’s pioneers and former rivals, in a deal that was supposed to deliver their industry to the promised land of profits and permanence, the company faces an uncertain future.
Although Mr. Stern brought listeners and prominence to Sirius, the move had a steep cost. His blockbuster, $500 million, five-year deal fueled a high-stakes competition between the two services that contributed to Sirius XM’s current bind.
Unlike free radio, which depends on advertising, satellite radio offers nearly commercial-free music and talk for a subscription fee. It’s akin to the difference between broadcast TV and premium cable, between NBC and HBO.
Even though Sirius XM is one of the very few media companies whose revenue and number of subscribers are growing these days, a dime and a nickel will get you a share of the company’s stock (with some change left over).
Its balance sheet is larded with nearly $1 billion of debt that matures in 2009 and must be refinanced — but try finding a sympathetic banker in our current hard-luck environment. Sirius XM has nearly 20 million paying customers, many of them evangelists for the service, but what does that matter if you can’t pay your debts?
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