Not sure how well it is known outside of the satellite radio message boards, but sometime next week Sirius/XM are gutting a lot of channels to merge some stations together.
I’m really disappointed even though I am well aware the combined XM/Sirius company’s stock is selling for around 25 cents a share and the company is in danger of bankruptcy.
It looks like Nov 12 will be the date. XM subscribers will probably notice the biggest change since most of the program directors and djs were fired from the XM side of the merger.
I"ll take a wait and see approach after we finally found out what channels are staying and what ones are leaving. I don’t really need satellite radio as much now since I have a much shorter commute now.
Does this mean that satellite radio is doomed to extinction, or that this particular company is doomed to extinction, and someone else will rise from the ashes with a viable long-term plan for profitable satellite radio?
If First Wave (Sirius 22–80’s alternative), Lithium (Sirius 24–90’s alt), Left of Center (Sirius 26–er, 00’s alternative), and CBC 3 (Sirius 86–yes! Canadian alternative) go, goodbye satellite radio for me.
Hard to say. I think satellite radio could have caught have been successful if they would have stuck to the original plan. But the huge contracts for programming doomed both XM and Sirius. The millions for Howard Stern, baseball, football, Oprah and many others.
I have Sirius radio for the sole purpose of listening to Channel 23 - Hair Nation. If it goes, so do I. The iPod I didn’t have 3 years ago will work just fine.
I like the Sirius music channels, particularly The Vault (although I still hear “Barracuda”), but I’m only subscribing for Stern. In my current financial situation, I couldn’t justify the expense without his channels. If he doesn’t re-up after his contract expires, I’m gone.
Duke, First Wave and Lithium are absolute staples for me as well.
So if these channels disappear (in favor of something similar XM has), this means I’m going to have to pony up and upgrade my subscription to that “Best of XM” stuff? I’m just trying to figure out how it will really impact me.
I have XM and I’m screwed. Beyond Jazz is known to be gone. I think Cinemagic is also gone. I had already lost two other favorites years ago, when Musiclab and Special X were dumped. In fact, when they ditched Musiclab, I switched to Sirius, only to change back when Sirius got rid of their equivalent to Beyond Jazz.
I expect to look over the final cuts, then decide if I want to keep XM, switch to Sirius, or quit them both. Sirius has a daily horse racing show (At The Races); if that survives, then I might go back to them.
I forgot to mention this in my last post. A few weeks ago, I was listening to BBC World Service (Sirius 141). The signal cut out, which is not uncommon in my area. But when the signal came back, it was on an XM channel. I don’t know which one it was, but the station specifically identified itself as an XM channel. After about 30 seconds the signal cut out again and came back as BBC. Very weird, almost Max Headroom-esque. Perhaps they were testing some signal changes.
Anyway, I also forgot to mention: I’m suspecting that most Sirius channels are going to stay. Just this morning they announced that Dave Kendall (yes, the Dave Kendall, I almost crashed my car when I heard that) is going to host a show on First Wave starting this week. Can’t imagine they’d hire someone just to blow up the channel the following week.
But that’s not all good news. Over the past year or so Sirius has been running a bunch of channels in all-one-artist formats. As of now Sirius has a Bruce Springsteen channel, an Elvis channel, a Led Zeppelin channel, an AC/DC channel, and a Grateful Dead channel. That’s not even counting the Jimmy Buffett channel, which plays about 67% Buffett. These channels SUCK. No matter how much you might like a band or artist, there is just not enough material there to justify a 24/7 channel. What’s worse, instead of adding channel slots for them, Sirius takes away an existing channel to have them. So the Punk channel (29), which was starting to find its feet, suddenly gets taken off the air for the AC/DC channel. I hope the first move in realigning channels is to get rid of those. I respect that they’re cheap, but…gahhhh. If I wanted to listen to Led Zep 24/7 I’d, you know, BUY THEIR ALBUMS. I wouldn’t be bothering with satellite radio.
As long as I don’t have to listen to Howard at all, I’m good. I’ll find something I like somewhere. I spend 98% of my time between XM 6, 40, and 46 anyway.
At first they did these when those artists were touring. The Rolling Stones channel only last as long as the tour, which was fine. But the Springsteen channel is still going, and I don’t get it. And if they’re going to have single-artist channels, why has there never been one for The Beatles? THAT is one I would listen to.
I hope they keep Sirius Channel 6. My husband had XM for a while, and I hated his 60s station.
Same here. I listen to the Latino music channels, since Chicago Latino radio is a hot mess, but I might just go to HD radio. I heard they have a pretty decent Latino rock station.
I’m an XM subscriber (came with the car), and I’m hoping they keep Lucy (XM54), America Left (XM167? mostly Air America, but with others from other networks), XM on Broadway (XM28), XMPR (?), and POTUS (XM130, I think). While I enjoy other stations on the dial, these are the ones that I tend to flip through when I’m trying to decide what to listen to…
XM already dumped my favorite channel, Fungus 53, a couple months ago. They replaced it with a channel that only plays AC/DC, and I hate AC/DC. When I listen to my recorded music from Fungus, they have the AC/DC channel title and it pisses me off.
Now, besides the stuff I’ve recorded from Fungus, I only listen to The Joint and Bluesville, and I don’t think it is worth it. Maybe if they bring the all Elvis channel from Sirrius or Left of Center I will rethink dumping them.
Is that what happened to XM59(Fungus)?? That really sucks. They swapped it for AC/DC 24/7. I don’t mind AC/DC at all but I can get all I need just by listening to any classic rock channel on FM for free. Same thing for the Led Zep channel. You can’t get anything they play on fungus on FM.
I was so pissed I fired off an email about it. The reply I got was that they only have a limited number of stations tough shit. Funny, they are so limited that they can devote channels 24/7 to one band.
I guess if it’s going to be like that I will just save money when I cancell their bullshit service.
I figure my favorite music station, U-Pop is also going to go away. When they did the big Coldplay 24/7 channel a month ago, they turned off U-Pop, then took their time turning it back on. And they always nuke it during the holiday season.
I have some of Sirrius on Dish Network.