Entry 29: "Soap Oprah"

Yo!

So I was watching Larry King on CNN last night, and he was talking with Oprah Winfrey "and friends" (read: "and business partners," I'll bet most of whom [except Gayle King of course], were purposely painted up as "friends" solely for the sake of having a catchy group name that rolls off the tongue better than "Oprah & Harpo Media Empire Business Partners"), and the topic of the hour was Oprah starting her own channel on Sirius' barely-a-threat satellite radio competitor XM last week. This means that those die-hard fans out there who REALLY need more than their 300 minutes a week Oprah fix now have an alternative, 24/7 fallback option, before, during and after the initial TV show to scratch that itch whenever the heck they want.

......................Ooooooooooookaaaaaaaaaayyy.........

Obviously, this move is nothing more than XM continuing to struggle to compete with Sirius by signing over their own really popular, high-profile celebrity, and reserve a channel on their lineup (channel 156, if you must know) exclusively for attempting to answer the million-dollar question: "How, oh how, do we compete with Howard Stern??" Personally, I've been on the satellite radio bandwagon for a while now; I've been a happy Sirius subscriber since December. It seems to me that there's just no end to the one-upsmanship XM is willing to stoop to in their never ending uphill battle for superiority.

I forgot who came first, XM or Sirius, but I remember when I first heard about satellite radio a few years back, I thought it sounded like a pretty cool idea on paper ("Radio beamed down from space?!? Madness!" and later, "......Ooooooohhh, on second thought, why the crap didn't I think of that?!?! First TapLights, now this?!?!?!"), and soon after, put it on my top-ten list of things to get after I could afford to, and in this case was old enough to, sign up for it. I turned 18 last October, and got a "Starmate Replay" Sirius receiver as a Christmas present from me to me because I'm always missing the Eagles and Steelers NFL games for one reason or another, and the commercial-free music was alright by me. Stern was, and still is, just the occasional icing on the cake to me. Seriously. I'm just not that heavily into Stern, and anyone who thinks people get Sirius only for hearing Howard's show.......... Well, okay, they're mostly right, according to the new subscriber numbers since January. But not all of us are SFN members, that's for sure.

..............Getting to the Bottom Line, though, Good luck to Oprah and XM. ...Oh yeah, and friends. From the looks of it, they'll sure need it. Sirius is about to start selling their first walk around, truly portable receiver unit, the Stiletto (yes, like the women's shoe), very soon, and The Sirius Store, aka "TSS Radio," is taking preorders on it as I type, but after all the dust settles from this radio war, you have to know that at some point, these companies are probably going to merge somehow. Heck, at this rate, by this time next year, Sirius will probably be making almost enough money to just buy XM out, and Oprah will just have to take her friends with her. All I'm saying is, watch your corporate news, people. All these companies merge eventually. ........But that's just me.

Later.

-D.