This was the original draw of Sirius Radio. The satellite thing was mostly for broadcasting range (meaning you could reliably get stations regardless of where you were physically located). The whole original point was that you paid a subscription so you didn’t have to listen to ads.
You just got continuous radio.
But it’s also worth noting that was the original point of cable TV too. You paid a subscription so you didn’t need to watch commercials. Broadcast TV was supported by ads, but cable was supported by subscribers. But once they had enough users, they started changing their messaging. It shifted from “ad-free TV” to “better quality, more channels”. And once people got used to that (and forgot about the no ads thing) they quietly started slipping commercials into cable TV. Because they realized they could just double-dip, and not running ads was essentially leaving money on the table. But the initial draw of cable was that you didn’t spend ~16 minutes watching commercials every hour.
QuinnyCoded@sh.itjust.works 1 month ago
if there was radio without ads I’d probably like it
mic_check_one_two@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 month ago
This was the original draw of Sirius Radio. The satellite thing was mostly for broadcasting range (meaning you could reliably get stations regardless of where you were physically located). The whole original point was that you paid a subscription so you didn’t have to listen to ads. You just got continuous radio.
But it’s also worth noting that was the original point of cable TV too. You paid a subscription so you didn’t need to watch commercials. Broadcast TV was supported by ads, but cable was supported by subscribers. But once they had enough users, they started changing their messaging. It shifted from “ad-free TV” to “better quality, more channels”. And once people got used to that (and forgot about the no ads thing) they quietly started slipping commercials into cable TV. Because they realized they could just double-dip, and not running ads was essentially leaving money on the table. But the initial draw of cable was that you didn’t spend ~16 minutes watching commercials every hour.