While Sirius counts down the days to Howard, sat radio rival XM used its press event to tout Bob — handing out DVDs of Martin Scorcese’s Dylan documentary along with the press kit as reporters left the bustling space in the LVCC North Hall. To get a sense of the company’s presence there, when I asked a worker for directions, he grinned and said, “XM? Head that way, you can’t miss it.”
It wasn’t a Bob-fest, though. The real emphasis was on the Castor and Pollux next gen portable XM2Go players: Samsung’s Helix and Pioneer’s Inno. The two offer live XM, MP3 and time-shifting via XM storage. Both offer tagging — users can bookmark a song and instantly add it to their XM+Napster account or buy it. Given the emphasis on MP3s, most people might think of music in connection with the new portables. Sports fans could gain even more. For instance, fans can take the players to the ballpark and listen to one game while they attend another. This kind of multitasking isn’t new; it wasn’t that long ago we were taking transistor radios and Casio handheld TVs to games and following either that event or another sporting event at the same time. What makes this different, is the ability to timeshift and the chance to keep up with out-of-town games. XM has MLB exclusively and will share the NHL for the next couple of years before an exclusive deal kicks in.
I’ve been wondering for a while how XM managed to wind up with a deal that combined sharing the NHL with Sirius for the remainder of that company’s contract and then going exclusive. Eric Logan, EVP-programming, says XM wanted to tap into league’s rebirth post-lockout and attract hockey fans as subscribers. “We were very aggressive with the NHL,” Logan said. When XM said it was willing to share at the beginning, league execs looked over the fine print of the Sirius deal and realized that kind of arrangement could fit. When the deal goes exclusive, XM will be able to follow its game plan for MLB — offering classic games and much deeper content.
David Butler, manager of corporate affairs, grinned when I mentioned the company’s role in joint venture Network Live. “Our live on-air coast-to-coast network makes it possible for us to give people front-row seats,” he said. No numbers on how the live events are directly contributing to new subs but the JV certainly has expanded XM’s marketing reach.
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