The Perils of Irrelevant Media

This week we had two reminders of why certain media are doomed ... and why others are fated to survive all challenges.

Both the venerable Muzak and the embattled Sirius-XM are facing Chapter 11 bankruptcy. At first glance the two have little in common; one is the very definition of “old media,” 75 years old, limping along; the other burst on the scene purporting to be a game-changer, full of sound and fury.

But on closer examination, Muzak and Sirius-XM are but two sides of the same coin. Neither is providing meaningful service to its consumers. Neither deserves to survive.

When I was a kid I sold Muzak for a while, and at the time the story was somewhat compelling: the music was scientifically designed to have a specific effect—energizing for a factory, soothing for a dentist’s office. But at its core, it’s just repackaged music.

Although Sirius-XM has myriad talk channels, most are music. And with certain high-profile exceptions—the over-exposed Howard Stern and Oprah Winfrey, for example—the wobbly satellite radio outfit offers nothing the media consumer can’t get elsewhere for free.

And then there’s radio. As we and others have said many times, our medium does pretty well, considering how badly we screw it up ... and right now we’re really excelling at that. But there is just enough genuinely relevant content—mostly in smaller markets, I have to say—to stave off the grim media reaper.

As long as we specialize in content that our communities find relevant and of service, we can survive. Actually, if we’re truly committed to our communities, we can do much better than survive.