Slashdot Review – Produced by SDR News

SDR2006-08-15 Podcast

August 15th, 2006 Administrator

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Today’s Headlines Include…

NASA Learns Anew From the Apollo Program
EFF Files Complaint with FTC Over AOL Data Leak
RIAA Ends Harassment of Grieving Family

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Today’s Artist

Chad Trent

Track:Mr Wonder [4:03]

Comments

YouTube Copycats – a Sign for an Industry

by Andrew McCaskey
Slashdot Review Podcast

As the item from Business Week mentioned, there are all sorts of YouTube wannabees swarming about – and for good reason. It looks like we are at a tipping point, or some such, and the mildly entertaining Captain Humprey’s Video Log at Blip.tv starts to look better than the local used car ads and sitcoms. The shake out in content and services will continue, but my sense is that some sort of boundary has been crossed, and just like the rumbling under telecom industry foundations a few years ago, some deep tunneling is going on in the entertainment world .

It’s carried over into an article about Satellite Radio that appeared today in the Wall Street Journal – as both XM and Sirius are running into trouble.

The article provided an example where a young, 30 something bought an Audi A4 with an XM Receiver installed, right off the dealer’s showroom floor. Somehow, the 90 day subscription included never got activated. Either by error at the dealer or a misunderstanding. When she tried to claim the free subscription, another mix up gave her information that she was not eligible for a free trial. Thoroughly irritated, she navigates around the Bay Area content with CD’s, broadcast news, and her iPod. Maybe a podcast listener .Maybe even a SlashdotReview listener.

WSJ continued to observe that both XM and Sirius have always felt that if they could hit the magic number of four million subscribers. Now both have hit that number and both are still losing about $600 to $800 million per year. Over time that is going to add up to some real money, Howard Stern, notwithstanding.

Consider that when XM was being planned, the major functional competitors that the Audi customer found entirely adequate did not exist. As we watch the YouTube shakeout the dorm room hijinks, lip sync, stupid pet tricks and so forth will mature into more commercial looking projects.

I never thought that I’d have Rocketboom on my Tivo, either.

Recent Show Notes

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