The corporate merger of the satellite radio giants Sirius and XM formally took place in 2008. On Wednesday, a remapped channel lineup should make the two networks finally feel more cohesive for listeners.
With some exceptions, subscribers who tune in to SiriusXM Radio should find that many channel numbers have changed. In a statement on its Web site, the company explained that the changes were undertaken “so that the array of programming choices we offer will be grouped together based on their genre or content type.”
SiriusXM has published a full guide to the channel shift here. The update should automatically download to subscribers’ radios on Wednesday.
According to Patrick Reilly, a company spokesman, SiriusXM has more than 20 million paid subscribers. While he did not say how many of those subscribers use the service in vehicles versus in hand-held devices and home-unit receivers, the company reported last year that “our primary means of distributing satellite radios is through the sale and lease of new vehicles.”
There has been speculation about the health of the satellite radio company, as competition for the in-car infotainment space has ramped up in recent years, particularly as automakers begin to bundle free Internet radio applications into their telematics systems.
But on Tuesday, the company reported that it added subscribers in the first quarter of 2011. “Consumers are buying cars again, and demand for our product is strong,” Mel Karmazin, the company’s chief executive, said in a statement. “Were it not for the (manufacturing) supply chain uncertainty resulting from the tragedy in Japan, we would be in a position to raise our subscriber guidance today.”
The new channel lineup more closely resembles the current Sirius channel list, populated in the lower end by pop music and rock, and book-ended with sports and talk programming.
Howard Stern, the marquee name on the lineup, remains at channels 100 and 101. Meanwhile, the Bruce Springsteen-centric “E Street Band” channel on Sirius moves from number 10 to 20, and the grunge “Lithium” channel migrates from 24 to 34.
For listeners who use present buttons to locate stations, SiriusXM says that presets “should automatically ‘follow’ any channels that you’ve preset to their new locations.”
With some exceptions, subscribers who tune in to SiriusXM Radio should find that many channel numbers have changed. In a statement on its Web site, the company explained that the changes were undertaken “so that the array of programming choices we offer will be grouped together based on their genre or content type.”
SiriusXM has published a full guide to the channel shift here. The update should automatically download to subscribers’ radios on Wednesday.
According to Patrick Reilly, a company spokesman, SiriusXM has more than 20 million paid subscribers. While he did not say how many of those subscribers use the service in vehicles versus in hand-held devices and home-unit receivers, the company reported last year that “our primary means of distributing satellite radios is through the sale and lease of new vehicles.”
There has been speculation about the health of the satellite radio company, as competition for the in-car infotainment space has ramped up in recent years, particularly as automakers begin to bundle free Internet radio applications into their telematics systems.
But on Tuesday, the company reported that it added subscribers in the first quarter of 2011. “Consumers are buying cars again, and demand for our product is strong,” Mel Karmazin, the company’s chief executive, said in a statement. “Were it not for the (manufacturing) supply chain uncertainty resulting from the tragedy in Japan, we would be in a position to raise our subscriber guidance today.”
The new channel lineup more closely resembles the current Sirius channel list, populated in the lower end by pop music and rock, and book-ended with sports and talk programming.
For listeners who use present buttons to locate stations, SiriusXM says that presets “should automatically ‘follow’ any channels that you’ve preset to their new locations.”
