Strong Words from Cox Radio CEO
As of late, the steady string of losses posted by SIRIUS and XM has left their competitors rather gleeful. It should thus come as no surprise that Cox Radio CEO Robert Neil has added his name to the list of I-told-you-so’s.
In a recent conference call with investors (the transcript of which can be found at Seeking Alpha), Neil expressed his conviction that there simply isn’t a large enough market for satellite radio and his distaste with Wall Street beancounters for allowing XM and SIRIUS to include radios installed in unsold cars in their subscription numbers.
Only time will tell if Neil is right. I certainly hope he is not, for if he is, this indicates an overwhelming satisfaction with mass-produced commercial-driven crap radio that is directly connected to a lowering of the quality of popular music from “iffy” to “mind-numbingly bad.” None of this, of course, would have happened if people didn’t buy into it; this isn’t really a case of chicken-or-the-egg. No matter what the answer to the question, “Did the lowering of people’s standards lead to lower quality music or did the lower quality music come out first and people became increasinglysatisfied with it?” is, the fact remains that consumers DID drop their standards (the causes of the overall vulgarization of American taste raises different questions entirely; I blame MTV-fueled short attention spans) and therefore most assume a large portion of the blame.
We are to blame for the garbage played on pop radio and we might not even want to pay a few bucks a month to rectify the situation. God save us all.
