Satellite radio is broadcast over clear, static-free digital signals from orbiting satellites. It provides a wide array of music and other channels and is available virtually anywhere you drive throughout the US, Canada and parts of the Caribbean. Subscribers pay a monthly fee for access to the service, and they enjoy a virtually uninterrupted listening experience even while driving around tall buildings or over bridges. The service also offers news, traffic, weather and comedy programming.
When the system first came on the scene, getting people to sign up was not easy. You had to buy a special tuner for your car and then there was the monthly subscription fee. XM and Sirius spent enormous amounts of money on advertising to promote the product but it still took a while for people to jump in.
One of the biggest barriers was the fact that satellite radio only works when there is line of sight between the satellite and receiver. Vehicles are inevitably going to pass under bridges or parking garages, drive into tunnels, go through tree canopies or be isolated in deep canyons of natural or urban nature. To overcome this, XM and Sirius worked with the automobile companies to get their radio tuners installed in new cars so that people had it in their vehicle when they got home from the dealership.
Once this happened, XM and Sirius started to get more subscribers. Eventually both companies got the car companies to make it so that every new car would come standard with a sat radio and a 6 month free subscription included in the purchase price. This made a big difference in people buying the product and it helped to grow the market for satellite radio.
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