Sirius XM 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.

Another useful tip from New Horizons Computer Learning Center.

Beginning with version 2002, Outlook includes a handy AutoComplete feature. When you begin to enter a name or email address in the To, CC, or Bcc field of a Message or Meeting Request form, Outlook offers a matching list of names or addresses you’ve sent items to in the past, which is similar to Microsoft Internet Explorer’s URL AutoComplete feature. However, if there’s a name or email address that’s no longer valid, or you sent an Outlook item with an incorrect email address in the past, those names and addresses continue to display in the dropdown list until you delete them. To do so, begin typing a name in one of the before-mentioned fields, and then use the arrow keys to select the invalid entry in the AutoComplete list. Finally, press the [Delete] key to permanently remove it from the list.

Advertising author and journalist, Warren Berger was recently interviewed on National Public Radio by Michele Norris and describes why radio is a great way for local business to establish themselves.

The 2-minute, 30-second interview could make a difference in your client’s marketing plans and your bottom line.

Take a Listen:
www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=103582527

When your walking into a client’s office to do a presentation from your laptop, it’s nice if you can start the pitch directly in full-screen presentation mode. If you have PowerPoint 2000-2004, here are the steps from the folks at New Horizon Computer Learning Center.

By default, PowerPoint saves your slide show as a PPT file, which, when double-clicked, launches PowerPoint. The slide show opens in whatever view was open when you saved it—Slide view, Normal view, or Slide Sorter view. If you want your slide show to immediately launch in Slide Show view, however, you need to save your file as a PowerPoint Show using the .pps extension.

1. Choose File | Save As to launch the Save As dialog box.
2. Select PowerPoint Show (*.pps) from the Save As Type dropdown list.
3. Type a name for your slide show in the File Name text box and click OK.

Now, the next time you or anyone else opens your presentation from outside of PowerPoint, your slide show immediately launches in Slide Show view. When you navigate past the last slide, the file automatically closes. To open the file for editing, launch PowerPoint, and use the File > Open dialog box.

Good stuff from Radio Sales Trainer, Dennis Heinz. Read more here.

12 steps to successfully getting the appointment and retaining a client:

1. Get to know the people that work in your building (You’re supposed to be a team)
2. Have a “current” station account list
3. Create your account list from yellow pages, etc.
4. Get the name and contact info of the decision maker
5. Map out your prospecting route (save gas and time)
6. Investigate your prospect from a customers view first
7. Take notes, ask yourself “How can I and my station help”
8. Make the appointment
9. Start the C.N.A. process, get to know your client
10. MAKE THE NEXT APPOINTMENT!!!
11. Send a Thank You note
12. Go to step one and repeat this on going process

Congratulations to Dave Solomon who won the $100 Amazon Gift Card in our contribute to Radio Advertising Tips giveaway. There were four folks that qualified for the $100 giveaway. Each of these folks also won a $5 Starbucks gift card: Bob Berger of Santa Barbara, Mel Correll of Dubois, PA, Dave Solomon, and John Small of South Dakota (each gave a minimum of a 150′ish word answer for each question).

You can still contribute to Radio Advertising Tips.

The more decision-makers we’re able to educate about radio advertising, the more advertisers we’ll have knocking on our doors. That’s what Radio Advertising Tips is about…educating the business community about the power of advertising on radio.

Thanks for your contribution to Radio Advertising Tips and congrats to Dave.

Contribute your Radio Advertising Tips and you could win a $100 Amazon Gift Card. Plus, the first 20 entries get a free Starbucks gift card. Go to www.radioadvertisingtips.com/contribute

Go to www.radioadvertisingtips.com/contribute

Mel Taylor at www.meltaylormedia.com is a leading voice for selling local media in a Web 2.0 world. His most recent post is a great one for radio station managers to review. Below is part of his post. Read the rest here.

Here are some questions that radio broadcasters can ask themselves, when trying to assess their online revenue strategy.

• Are you waiting for corporate to show you the way?

• Is the corporate Interactive VP well versed in online sales & revenue models, or are they primarily focused on building cool websites and just driving user & streaming numbers?

• Are your websites advertiser friendly (IAB compliant), and can the advertiser have an impactful presence on your site?

• Is your site search engine optimized? Are the individual pages/sections/content coded so that Google can find them?

• Are your websites user-friendly…. or is it a train wreck full of marketing and programming content?

• Are you doing more than just selling banners and streaming spots?

• Does each seller & manager have a mandatory Web budget, as well as penalties for not hitting it?

• Can your sales staff comfortably sell Web and overcome common objections? Do you know what these common objections are?

• What kind of training are you providing to your staff? Is it ongoing?

• Do your managers have strong grasp of Web, and the competitive online environment?

• Do you know what your local, online revenue share is? Do you know how to find this out?

• Do you know what other Broadcast, Newspaper and other sites are doing to take dollars from you?

• Is it OK for your on-air staff to have their own websites, MySpace, Facebook, or YouTube channels?

Read more from Mel’s post here.
Learn more about creating your own sales presence online here.

If your Outlook is out of control, here’s how to compact your PST file according to New Horizons Computer Learning Centers:

After you’ve cleaned out your mailbox, you’d expect that the natural result would be for the file size of your PST file to decrease. Outlook will automatically compact the file if the difference in size will be more than 20 percent. If it’s less, however, you’ll want to manually compact the file. To do so, right-click on the Outlook Today icon in your Folder List or on the Outlook bar and choose Properties. Click the Advanced button, and then click Compact Now in the Personal Folders dialog box. Outlook then compacts your PST file. Click OK twice to close the open dialog boxes.

If you have multiple personal message folders, right-click on their top-level folder, where your account name is displayed. Then, continue with the preceding steps.