Sirius XM (SIRI) satellite radio was supposed to be one of the most successful consumer electronics devices of all time. A subscriber would be able to listen to more than 100 stations coast-to-coast in either a moving vehicle, or using a portable version of the device. Initially, the service planned to run no commercials. One of the two companies that would eventually be the merged Sirius XM was XM Satellite Radio which launched its service in September 2001. At the end of the year, the company had almost 28,000 subscribers, a figure that jumped to about 350,000 by the end of the 2002 and 5.9 million by the end of 2005. Over this period, the company accumulated hundreds of millions of dollars of debt in order to cover capital expenses, operating deficits, and sales and marketing costs. Analysts expected the company to be extremely profitable once it reached subscriber levels of more than 10 million. The business was growing so quickly that this goal seemed a foregone conclusion.

Rival Sirius launched its service in July 2002. Over the next five years, it would have fewer subscribers than XM but would grow nearly as fast. Sirius also took on tremendous amounts of debt to support its operations. As both companies ran low on money, they announced a merger on February 17, 2007. The FCC reviewed the request for thirteen months while the companies were bleeding cash. Subscriber growth had slowed, most likely because of new and more popular consumer electronics devices like the Apple iPod and multimedia cellular handsets. Shares in Sirius, which had traded at $63 in 2000, dropped to $.05 earlier this year. In the first quarter of 2009, the number of subscribers for the combined service declined by 400,000 from the previous quarter to 18.6 million. Neither Sirius nor XM ever made a dime.

Get the complete list of the 10 Biggest Tech Failures of the Last Decade Here.

While looking through my Google alerts, I came across a blog post from the Peanuts to Profits blog. See the summary below. You can read the full article here.

Here are some surefire radio advertising strategies that can transform the fate of your business in weeks - not months and leave your competition wondering how you do it.

Define Your Campaign Goals

• Before you start a radio campaign, you need to have simple, straightforward, and measurable goal. It is not enough to say “I want a commercial that will bring in customers.”
• Before you write your commercial, tune in and listen to some other commercials.  Notice how they all ask you to take a specific action?  To have a successful commercial you need to know what SPECIFIC action you want your customer to take.  Do you want a phone call, a visit, a hit on your website - be specific.

Keep your message simple.  You don’t have time to be complicated, cute, or tricky.  Your commercial should:

• Talk about Benefits - not Features
• Show Undeniable Value
• Ask the listener to take an action

If you think you can do more than that and still have a good commercial you are kidding yourself.  These three things are a LOT to get done in :30 seconds.

Read the rest of the article here.

According to business columnist and author, Geoffrey James, the reason newspapers across the country are folding faster than a bad poker hand is not the national economy, but “…that advertisers have finally figured out that newspapers, in collusion with clueless marketers and unscrupulous ad execs, have been fleecing them for decades.” Read the full article here.