Opinion BY Armin

Siriusly Lame

In 2008 the two leading satellite radio companies — and as I understand it, the only ones granted a license to do so by U.S. Federal Communications Commission — merged to create SiriusXM, a powerhouse with 135 channels of commercial free music with more than 20 million subscribers. The original companies were strong on their own: Sirius launched in 2001, made a big splash in 2004 when it lured Howard Stern away from earth-bound radio; and XM, also launched in 2001, attracted Oprah and her team of personalities in 2006. Operating with a very mergerish logo since the merger, a new logo had been spotted as early as November of last year and just this month the new SiriusXM logo appeared on their website.

The Sirius logo is probably the better known of the two, thanks to its cute starry-eyed dog, whose unofficial nickname is Mongo. A good logo and one that came to represent the revolution of what radio could be back in the early ’00s. The logo for XM wasn’t bad, it had distinct typography and radio waves that matched. Combined as a merger it was horrible, but most merger logos are, so no surprise there. It’s interesting that in the new logo the waves from the XM logo survived but Mongo didn’t, perhaps he was too strong a character to reflect a combined company. The two old logos still make appearances here and there to work with legacy customers who may have pre-merger subscriptions or equipment, so it can create a slightly confusing universe of logos.

The new logo is bland and clunky. The typography is as appetizing as a satellite radio network broadcasting music-free commercials. It’s bulky, lacks sophistication, and, for the life of me, I can’t understand why the “m” in “Xm” is lowercase but with an uppercase height. The waves themselves are fine (it’s hard to screw up waves) but in contrast to the type they have the same ratio as a spaghetti does to a meatball. For a company that represents such a strong model and broke conventions — who would want to pay for radio?! — this is far too stale.

Thanks to Roy Levitt for first tip (November 2010).

Many thanks to our ADV @ UnderConsideration Partners