In October of 2007 I began using your XM radio service, and it was stellar. You captured me with the gentle strains of uninterrupted adult contemporary and alt-rock bliss.
After the free trial ran out, I purchased a year's subscription, and then a year later, another. Unfortunately, it now seems that your company has veered off the straight and narrow road to radio success and on to the twisting highway of fail.
I pay you to play music. That's it. It's why I pay you. Public radio – which is free, by the way – has commercials and lots of talking which bears no resemblance to music, because it has to pay the bills. I, and the other millions of consumers who pay you, keep you in business.
Let me lay it out. I pay you to play music. I do not, and will never, pay you to have people talk.
But now it’s happened.
Entertainment news on the hits channel? Don't care. Paying to listen to the hits. I have a television, Internet, and iPhone if I want the latest gossip. The "Morning Mash-up" breakfast show? Oh. Dear God. No. One thousand times no.
Maybe your market research was poor, or maybe you just didn't do the math, but the last time a morning show was actually funny was in 1986 in Grand Falls, Montana, at 2:56am when one of the announcers made a slightly humorous pun involving Alan Frew.
Since then, no one in the entire world has found the collection of braying hyenas and caterwauling ravens featured on these kinds of shows anything but eye-gougingly annoying.
I was just too trusting, too naive.
Let me quickly run off how a business works for you, just in case you've missed it, because something sure went wrong somewhere.
1) Make a product people will pay for – this was the innovative idea of paid-for (but commercial and talk-free!) radio.
2) Deliver said product – this was accomplished by developing the XM radio network and actually playing music.
3) Improve said product – adding new channels, even odder types of music, “music” in no definable sense except to three college kids in Eastern Massachusetts, that sort of thing.
4) Don't $#%@ it up – see, this is where there's a disconnect. 1, 2 and 3 are straight forward, but you seem to be using #5, which is not on the list and states
5) Start changing the product to closely resemble one which can be obtained for free. This will convince stupid consumers, who we hate, to keep buying our awesome product due to our inherent awesomeness.
See how that works? Or doesn’t, in your case?
You've failed me, XM, and all of those like me who love music and not talking on the radio they pay for. This money train stops here, and it is never going back into service, not even if the conductor gets one of those jaunty “railroady” type hats. Never!
So adios, XM radio! Keep your morning shows and entertainment news bites. I'll head back to good old public radio. They don't make promises they don't keep. Their forced familiarity and incessant mattress commercials both bore and anger me, but at least I’m not paying for it.
Warmest Regards,
Letter Sent Jan 9, 2010 1:14pm
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