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Saturday, November 20, 2004

I'm not a Luddite by nature.
It took a lot of hard work to get to the point where I was skeptical enough about technology to be cynical. I'm proud of it. All this talk about satellite radio, for example, was very difficult to trust. Subscription radio? Well, having lived through the inception, acceptance, and popularity of Pay TV there's only so much cynicism to spread around.

Both Sirius and XM offer three-day free trials. (Although I'm sure my e-mail will be layered with ads for years to come as a result of my registration.) Why not?

Here's the deal, when I'm not listening to talk radio (and I don't mean NPR), I like rock --classic, what I grew up with, rock and roll. Don't give me "shock jocks." IMO, they're just cras people pandering to folk who never outgrew sophomore year of college. I don't care about sports unless its NASCAR (although I'm not going to buy a Nextel phone and sign up for its NASCAR radio service); if there's no harpsichord, don't bother me with classical (OK, maybe the 1812 Overture, if done with canons...); just play me that good old time rock and roll. I'm tired of flipping through CDs (or 8-tracks, in the case of my '76 Camaro).

Both networks, thankfully, have Rock 'n' Roll channels. Excellent! XM breaks it down into a couple of decades, Sirius has a few flavors, one called "Classic Vinyl." Sounds real.

There I sit, with my big hulky Extreme PC logged on to XM, listening over the Internet, 60's, 70's, 80's.... Goawd! Can't their DJs just shut up? I don't want AM Rock Cousin Brucey Clones climbing over the intro to almost every song. I'd be paying for this!! Then there's the music. Sure, there's some rock in there, but the majority of the tunes are either Top 40 or just plain Easy Listening. (Which are sometimes one and the same anyway...)

Over on Sirius I dial up Classic Vinyl... No DJs.... Oops, spoke too soon. Apparently the DJs wake up about 10:00am EST. Well, at least he's not obnoxious and annoying --yet. (Okay, some overtalk on the end of the music, but not a lot. It's more like FM, at least where I am. Wait, he just walked over the intro to We're an American Band. They need to learn, it's not the DJs we want to hear.) The music? It's rock, mostly! Jethro Tull... T. Rex... Hendrix... Led Zeppelin... How the hell did Steely Dan get in there with Rikki Don't Lose That Number? Still, the mix looks to be greater than 6:1 and I can live with that. (Although, having lived it, I'm not sure I'd classify Dylan as rock. Must be young guys doing the programming.) And there's only the occasional plug for the service. (Which makes no sense. I have a big Sirius LOGO on the screen. There'd be a logo on the radio, if I had one. Do they think I'm thinking I'm on XM? Maybe it's an FCC requirement...)

So what does it mean to me? If I was to bite the big satellite bullet in the sky, and with apologies to Willie Nelson, I'd probably stick Sirius in the Camaro. (That's a BIG concession. It means chopping an otherwise pristine dashboard for a Sirius-compatible receiver and then finding a place for the Sirius tuner. None of that portable crap. I don't want to drive in an elevator and only TV is allowed in the LofD&PC.) Admittedly, I've only put in a couple of hours on each side, and even then it was for specific entertainment content, but I don't understand how XM became so big and bad. Much as I have no affection for Howard Stern, as long as Sirius doesn't try to reclone itself as XM, hopefully he and the soon to be newly arrived Mel Karmazin can do good things for the service.

# Permalink Posted at 6:50 AM 5 comments Email this Link

Comments on this Item:

The reason for the IDs, despite the giant logos you see, is that someone may be listening via Dish Network (in the case of Sirius) or in a public place (like in a store) - and they want to make sure that folks know what they're listening to. Makes sense, really, since part of what they want to do is sell more receivers.

James Hartman
Pflugerville, TX

# posted by Anonymous 12:54 PM

DISCLAIMER: I am not an employee of XM Satellite Radio. I own an Delphi XM Roady and have subscribed to the service for about a year, and I am one happy customer.

In defense of XM, there's more to the rock offerings than just the decade channels (40s - 90s). Those stations also try to capture the feel of what popular music radio was like during those times.

If you want to focus on classic rock without the retro DJ air, I would recommend two other music channels: Top Tracks (XM 46) and Deep Tracks (XM 40).

Top Tracks is the stuff you know. Deep tracks contains stuff recorded by bands you know, but probably forgot they recorded because those songs have long since been pared from the playlists of commercial classic rock stations.

If you were into progressive rock, Music Lab (XM 51) might be of interest, too. That might be pushing the limits, though. :-)

Don't forget that there is also a NASCAR Radio (XM 144) channel that carries the full range of Nextel Cup, Busch Series, and Craftsman Truck series events. That includes qualifying, pre-race, race, and call-in programming from PRN and MRN. They also carry their own call-in show.

During the Nextel Cup races, they also carry the FanScan in-car radio channel on NASCAR Radio 2 (XM 145).

# posted by P.J. 5:46 PM

Haven't tried Top or Deep Tracks. I will and amend the entry if needed. Thanks for the tip. Wish XM was as forthcoming. Progressive rock.... Nah. But thanks for the thought.

The NASCAR argument is almost persuasive but the visceral nature of Cup races almost demands that you watch them. (I actually record them, edit out the 2,463 commercials, and then watch the race in as much a contiguous fashion as possible.) The in-car stuff is all right, I guess, but I'm not real big on that type of behind the scenes kind of stuff. (Never watch the, "Making of..." shows.) Listening to a driver tell his crew chief he thinks there's a tire going flat doesn't compare to watching the thing blow and tear out part of a fender in the process. Yeah, I know....

Thanks! (And it wouldn't matter if you were an employee, etc... There's nothing wrong with touting your own stuff. Look how often Alice does it here!!)

# posted by Bill 7:43 PM

Let me add my two cents on XM as well. Yeah, I hate the guy on the 60s channel -- looks like he was an AM radio DJ back then and they seem to want that sort of flavor on that channel.

There are other channels where the dj's don't tramp on the music -- to cite a couple more. Fine Tuning (which the XM management change the channel on every couple of weeks) is one that the dj is okay on. I think its channel 76. Most of the jazz channels are the same. There's a live concert channel where there's no dj at all.

# posted by Bruce 5:08 PM

Ok, a bit off toppic...

I got fed up with comercials and DJ's a couple years ago. Then I saw this really cool unit that a few talented people made on their own. The Empeg MP3 player for the car. This was later bought by Rio as the RioCar. Now you may say that is nothing now, but when they did it there was NOTHING close to what it was in style features and functionality until the ipod. And that was a different market. There still isn't anything I would replace it with. Unfortunatly it seems Rio somehow managed to kill it.

umm... oh yea back to the point :) I already had all the CD's of the music I liked. So I just threw them on the palyer (about 18GB worth) and havn't listened to radio since. Adding new material as it intrests me.

With all the ipods and similar players out there I personaly don't know why people use anything else. I think the best solution is an ipod or equally good portable that has a dock in a car. Unfortunatly this is non-existant as far as I know. The car head unit should be made to take over as the interface, being just as stylish and easy to use as the portable (or more so).

# posted by Anonymous 7:02 PM

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