Filed under: TV, Marketing and advertising, News Corp’B’ (NWS)

About each 10 seconds or so this season, “American Idol” host Ryan Seacrest or one of the judges brags about how this group of contestants is the most talented in the show’s history. They speak about the large number of votes being cast and the huge number of song downloads sold on iTunes. Well, as the Associated Press points out, the American people would beg to differ.

“The 21.8 million people who watched last Tuesday’s competition was the show’s smallest Tuesday audience in more than five years,” the AP said. “The show did superior the next night, with 22.9 million, but that was the smallest Wednesday audience in three years, according to Nielsen Media Research.”

But Idol fans and shareholders of News Corp. (NYSE: NWS) should not get too down since the show can be saved if producers follow my advice:

1. Fire Paula Abdul - Most of the time she makes no sense which has lead some people to wonder there is more than just Coca-Cola in that red cup in front of her. Perhaps Sharon Osbourne is available. She would make an excellent foil to Simon Cowell.
2. A new catch phrase for Randy Jackson — That “dog” does not hunt any more. The show should hold a contest to develop a new phrase for him to keep repeating.
3. Get Simon Cowell a wardrobe — Is he too cool to like how he dresses or too cheap to buy nice clothes?
4. Seacrest out — Whatever pact he’s made with Satan has bound to have expired. Why does he need Idol anymore when he’s on every other television show?
5. The sound system — Am I crazy or does the sound on some songs seem much clearer than others?
6. The results show — Producers stretch out 10 minutes of content into a 30-minute show. Either make this program interesting or merge the two shows together.
7. The musical numbers — Why must viewers be tortured by the Idols butchering a pop music classic set to an arrangement that makes them look less hip than cruise ship entertainers? This should be axed.
8. Phone calls — The idiotic questions from idiotic viewers grind the show to a halt
9. Transparency — It would be nice to know the vote totals for each performer
10. Contestants — Producers used to be good at finding interesting people who can sing. What happened?

Though the viewership is still huge, the show has gotten as stale as day-old bread. The final contestants are a mediocre lot at ideal. David Cook has got rock star hair but has copied many of his memorable song arrangements from others. David Archuletta always looks like he is about to cry as he sings one song just like the other. Syesha Mercado has a pretty voice but she seems more suited to the Broadway stage than the pop charts.

Week after week, voters ditched the talented contestants such as Carly Smithson, and Amanda Overmyer and the ones that showed flashes of promise like Michael Johns. Instead, they let the likes of Jason Castro and Kristy Lee Cook make it to the top 10.

If Americans can’t get this right, how are we going to ever elect a president?

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Filed under: Earnings reports, Deals, XM Satellite Radio (XMSR), Sirius Satellite Radio (SIRI), Marketing and advertising

Sirius Satellite Radio Inc. (NASDAQ: SIRI) Chief Executive Officer Mel Karmazin seems exasperated that the Federal Communications Commission has yet to rule on his company’s merger with XM Satellite Radio Holdings Inc. (NASDAQ: XMSR) which was filed more than a year ago.

“We share the reasonable frustration that many of our investors feel regarding the time it has taken,” stated the loquacious CEO during yesterday’s earnings conference call (via SeekingAlpha). “We also share the outrage that some have expressed to me regarding press reports of opportunistic celebrations trying to take advantage of the process and extract value for themselves that properly belongs to SIRIUS subscribers and shareholders.”

Karmazin has a point. The FCC review of the satellite radio merger has moved at a glacial pace because of the opposition of the terrestrial radio industry which figures that any medium that employs Howard Stern needs to be stopped at all costs. As yesterday’s earnings report indicates, the industry isn’t huge enough to support two companies.

Sirius reported a first-quarter net loss of $104.1 million, or 7 cents a share, narrower than $144.7 million, or 10 cents a share, a year earlier. Revenue rose 33% to $270.4 million. The results, which matched Wall Street expectations, were helped by a drop in SAC per gross subscriber addition to $91 in the first quarter from $101 a year earlier. The company ended the quarter with 8.64 million subscribers, up 31% from a year earlier. Average revenue per subscriber was tiny changed at$10.42,

The results at XM were worse. The Washington-based company had a net loss of $129.3 million, or 42 cents, on sales of $308.5 million. Janco Partners analyst April Horace told Bloomberg News that “the company is retaining more customers after a free introductory period and is putting its radios into a larger variety of vehicle models.”

Good thing too since subscriber acquisition costs rose to $73 in the quarter from $65 a earlier. Conversion and churn rates both improved year-over-year, according to the company’s earnings release.

My colleague Douglas McIntyre, like many observers, is pretty pessimistic about the merger, writing “It is now too late for the proposed merger to do either company any good, so, the merger has fundamentally failed before it was consummated.”

I am not sure I would go that far but I agree that satellite radio at best is a niche medium with an uncertain future,

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