Sirius XM: Is Anyone Home, or Just Crickets and Controversy?
Alright, let’s be real for a second. You ever watch a company just… drive itself off a cliff, in slow motion, while waving to everyone on the way down? Because that’s what it feels like watching Sirius XM these days. I mean, where do you even start with the trainwreck that unfolded last week? My inbox is blowing up, and frankly, my patience for corporate tone-deafness is running thinner than a cheap dollar store napkin.
It all kicked off with Megyn Kelly, right? Wednesday, November 12, 2025. She’s on her Sirius XM show, talking about Jeffrey Epstein – because of course that’s the kind of content we all signed up for. And then she drops this bombshell, claiming her unnamed source said Epstein’s victims were "barely legal type" teens, not younger than 10. She says she’s just conveying "factual distinctions," while also calling his conduct "sick" and "disgusting." Give me a break. You can’t just throw out a morally bankrupt "distinction" like that and then try to wash your hands of it with a quick "it’s bad." The internet, bless its collective, furious heart, did not let that slide.
The Echo Chamber of Outrage and Outages
My screen was practically vibrating with the rage. Threads, TikTok, X, Reddit – it was a digital wildfire of people calling for boycotts. I saw folks, actual human beings, saying they’ve been Sirius radio subscribers for ten, thirteen, twenty years, and they’re done. Done. They ain't just mad at Kelly; they’re furious at Sirius XM for platforming her in the first place. You can practically hear the collective sigh of resignation from every long-suffering subscriber punching in their cancellation code. Someone even posted a step-by-step guide on Reddit that racked up over 4,000 upvotes. Four thousand! That ain't just a few angry tweets; that’s a movement.
And as if that wasn't enough self-sabotage, what happens next? A widespread outage of their audio streaming services, on an unspecified Thursday. Just poof, gone. You can almost picture the poor customer service reps, already drowning in calls about Kelly, suddenly getting hit with a tidal wave of "My Sirius app ain't working!" complaints. It’s like the universe decided to pile on, giving subscribers another reason to just throw their hands up and say, "You know what? Maybe I don’t need this XM radio after all." The stock (SIRI) apparently didn't even flinch, which just makes me wonder if Wall Street has its own private, isolated version of reality. Are we really supposed to believe that losing thousands of long-term subscribers over a moral outrage and simultaneously failing to provide the basic service they pay for has zero impact? It’s almost comical. Almost.
Corporate Shuffle and Delusional Dreams
Meanwhile, in the ivory tower of SiriusXM corporate, they’re playing musical chairs with the CFO position. Zac Coughlin is stepping in January 1, 2026, replacing Tom Barry. Coughlin’s got a resume longer than my arm – Nike, Ford, LVMH – all the big names. They’re probably hoping this new blood can magically fix their subscriber bleed, which, let’s be honest, has been a steady drip for a while now. They’re facing off against Spotify, Apple Music, every podcast under the sun. It’s a brutal fight for eyeballs and ears, and their business model, relying on subscriptions and ads, feels like trying to win a drag race with a golf cart.
Then there are their financial projections: $8.6 billion in revenue by 2028, with earnings jumping from a negative $1.8 billion to $1.1 billion. Call me crazy, but that sounds less like a business plan and more like a fever dream, especially when you’re actively pissing off your core audience and your service is literally going dark. They’re predicting a modest annual revenue decline of 0.1% while their platform is melting down and their biggest personalities are making headlines for all the wrong reasons. Do they even look at the comment sections? Or are they just staring at spreadsheets, hoping numbers can outrun common sense? What’s the plan here, really? Just keep Howard Stern around forever and pray for a Christmas miracle on the Sirius XM Christmas channels?
The Abyss Stares Back
This whole situation is a mess. No, 'mess' is too kind—it's a full-blown corporate self-immolation. You’ve got a platform that's supposed to be about content, about connection, and instead, it's becoming a lightning rod for controversy and technical glitches. Maybe I'm just an old cynic, but when your company is hemorrhaging subscribers over a morally dubious commentator and experiencing widespread outages, while simultaneously announcing wildly optimistic financial forecasts, it smells less like a strategy and more like pure, unadulterated denial. They expect us to believe this nonsense, and honestly... I’m not buying it.
