Sirius XM Prepares for Possible Bankruptcy

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Sirius XM, the satellite broadcaster who only recently combined their previously-competitive channel offerings and cut a whole bunch of the popular stations, suddenly has an even more uncertain future. The company is preparing for a possible bankrupty filing, which “could come within days,” according to the New York Times. However, this may just be a crazy high-stakes cat-and-mouse game with EchoStar/Dish Network bigwig Charles Ergen, who controls a whole bunch of Sirius’ bulging debt. Ergen would apparently have to make a formal offer to purchase the company sooner than later if he wanted to avoid the bankruptcy mess, so it’s kind of like Sirius CEO Mel Karmazin (formerly in charge of former Party Ben employer CBS awesome radio!) is saying pony up or watch us go bye-bye. Gutsy!Sirius is of course home to Howard Stern, whom I listened to quite a bit last weekend in a Sirius-equipped rental car. Stern continues to be pretty hilarious, although it still startles me to hear people swear on the radio. Flipping through the various Sirius XM channels, I discovered an ironic situation: the only stations I wanted to listen to for more than a few minutes were rebroadcasts of real live radio and TV stations: BBC Radio 1, NPR, CNN. Even the Sirius dance station, BPM, only seemed to get interesting when it switched over to BBC-produced mixes. God bless Sirius for trying, but I’ve always maintained that a satellite radio “network” that produces all its own content is like a cable TV company that offers 100 channels of, say, “Comcast Local Spotlight” or school lunch menus. Full disclosure: I do production and programming work for an internet radio company, and sure, it could be considered in competition with Sirius. But the satcaster has blown through so much money, it almost seemed designed to fail, although if it does, you can bet Karmazin won’t go hungry. I just hope Howard lands on his feet; say what you will, but he’s always entertaining, and is one of the few things Sirius does itself that’s worth listening to.

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WHO DOESN’T LOVE A POSITIVE STORY—OR TWO?

“Great journalism really does make a difference in this world: it can even save kids.”

That’s what a civil rights lawyer wrote to Julia Lurie, the day after her major investigation into a psychiatric hospital chain that uses foster children as “cash cows” published, letting her know he was using her findings that same day in a hearing to keep a child out of one of the facilities we investigated.

That’s awesome. As is the fact that Julia, who spent a full year reporting this challenging story, promptly heard from a Senate committee that will use her work in their own investigation of Universal Health Services. There’s no doubt her revelations will continue to have a big impact in the months and years to come.

Like another story about Mother Jones’ real-world impact.

This one, a multiyear investigation, published in 2021, exposed conditions in sugar work camps in the Dominican Republic owned by Central Romana—the conglomerate behind brands like C&H and Domino, whose product ends up in our Hershey bars and other sweets. A year ago, the Biden administration banned sugar imports from Central Romana. And just recently, we learned of a previously undisclosed investigation from the Department of Homeland Security, looking into working conditions at Central Romana. How big of a deal is this?

“This could be the first time a corporation would be held criminally liable for forced labor in their own supply chains,” according to a retired special agent we talked to.

Wow.

And it is only because Mother Jones is funded primarily by donations from readers that we can mount ambitious, yearlong—or more—investigations like these two stories that are making waves.

About that: It’s unfathomably hard in the news business right now, and we came up about $28,000 short during our recent fall fundraising campaign. We simply have to make that up soon to avoid falling further behind than can be made up for, or needing to somehow trim $1 million from our budget, like happened last year.

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