From The New York Times:
Even if the deal does not face resistance from the F.C.C., it is likely to encounter opposition elsewhere. The National Association of Broadcasters, a trade association for television and radio stations, is already speaking out against a merger.
“In coming weeks, policymakers will have to weigh whether an industry that makes Howard Stern its poster child should be rewarded with a monopoly platform for offensive programming,” the group said. “We’re hopeful that this anticonsumer proposal will be rejected.”
Where does a music fan who’s befuddled by the would-be phenomenon of satellite radio find a reason to care about the proposed merger of XM and Sirius? Is this merger not inevitable? Does it not reflect all that’s wrong with satellite radio in the first place: the tightly preselected formats and playlists, the final eradication of regional tastes, the take-it-or-leave-it stance of multimedia conglomerates…
And what’s with this article’s ultimate focus on Howard Stern and issues of morality? The New York Times piece begins with the lovely cheesecake shot we’ve copied here and ends with concerns about “a monopoly platform for offensive programming.” Is that the only monopoly the National Association for Broadcasters should be concerned about?
I’ve long had only one opinion about this whole matter: Enable me to have an Internet hookup in my car so that I can tune into the thousands of free college and indie stations that broadcast over the Web. I don’t need Howard Stern or Bob Dylan as my host. I don’t need some safe, segmented programming with an LCD display of the song and artist playing. I want to hear music with personality, including the personality of sometimes stumbling college DJs. Satellite radio can continue to kiss my grits!
As an avid XM listener, I’m psyched about the merger – Having Little Steven’s Channel and football will be nice additions.
Mr Mod – I think you are close in your deisre to have internet access from your car. I think I heard a company was working on that.
Sounds like I can safely continue to ignore satellite radio…
I have had Sirius for about a year. I got it to listen to Stern but have forsaken him for The Underground Garage. Playlist? Yes. Tight? No. And talk about personality- Andrew Loog Oldman is so hilariouly pretentious and Kim Fowley shouldn’t be allowed in a room with sharp objects.
I find the rest of Sirius no better or worse than free internet stations. But we don’t have internet in the car, yet. We road trip 4-6 times a year and having Sirius in the car has been really nice.
I am also looking forward to the XM addition of MLB.
OK, I can see the utility of satellite radio as a “tool” for our travelin’ lifestyles and an option for those who live in areas with poor connections to regular radio and/or worse options than most of us have. Fair enough. I still think the whole thing stinks of The Man further controlling our listening lives.
Perhaps but what the Man is offering here is more enticing than usual.
And now that you’ve posted that cheesecake pic, aren’t you as guilty as The NYT? (not that I want you to take it down, mind you)
Don’t knock Dylan’s show until you try it. “Theme Time Radio Hour” is the second most entertaining hour of radio consistently each week, after Chicago Public Radio’s “This American Life”.
I wasn’t knocking Dylan’s show, Christian, but the expectation that I’m going to be content with a pay-per-listen monopoly because of Dylan’s show. I know Stern was a huge drawing card. I wonder if any particular DJ or radio host would make me want to sign up for satellite radio as it’s presently constructed. There was a stretch when Tom Scharpling was pretending that he was going to leave WFMU for satellite. For the 5 minutes until I realized he was goofing on the Stern thing, I was wondering if I’d sign up specifically to follow Scharpling’s show. I caught onto the joke before I made up my mind.
Well, when traveling, why not just bring CDs or plug your IPod into your car stereo? That way you actually get to play music that you want to hear.
But seriously, I’d love to know what anybody gets out of XM when it comes to more opportunities to listen to the MUSIC that you love, as opposed to just bringing your own along. No thanks on the talk shows, far as I’m concerned.
Because, I’ve heard all the music I have! I’ve always been a big radio-fan and what I love is the suprise of hearing songs you like but do not own, or listening to cool segues.
Triple ditto. Good radio is a different experience than playing music. Apples and oranges. When we road trip, we load up CDs and plug in the Sirius.
Andyr wrote:
Mmmm. I know what you mean, but some of those satellite stations are so tightly formatted that I don’t know if you’d have the opportunity to hear a segue between an early Beatles song and a late Beatles song, except for on The Beatles satellite station. Know what I mean? Do any of those stations allow you to hear a segue from, say, “Not Fade Away” (Buddy Holly or Stones version) to “Rudy Can’t Fail”? I would think not. It would be too much of a stretch for folks who only want to hear the Hits of the Fall of ’64 station.
I can think of two stations on Sirius that could easily do that- Underground Garage and I think the other is called Sirius Disorder. On Sirius Disorder they might very well follow those up with some Stan Kenton.
Well, I hear that, but I’m not willing to wade through the 12 songs I don’t like to hear one that I do. No thanks.
A good radio station will give you a much better than 12:1 ratio. And you can always use the remote to flip around. But you do indeed have to be in an adventurous mood.
Good radio is entirely different from listening to CDs or an iPod, that’s why. Charity and I went out to Stoughton this evening to buy some new dining room furniture — because that’s adulthood for you — and so I’d reserved a pickup from Zipcar for the haulage ability. And naturally, being a Texan and driving a pickup (something that all Texans love to do, even when we live in Boston), I needed the proper soundtrack. So I turn on the XM and spin it onto Willie’s Place, the hardcore trad-country station, and within 30 seconds, I’ve got George and Tammy singing “We’re Not the Jet Set.” And by god, if you don’t understand what is fundamentally RIGHT about that, then you don’t understand radio.
So after 45 minutes or so of deep tracks by folks like Faron Young, Hank Snow and Tom T. Hall — names that will get you nothing but blank looks from 98.7% of country radio programmers — I decide to spin the dial and I listen to my favorite station, The Verge, for a while. Over the course of the half hour, they play Broken Social Scene’s “It’s All Gonna Break,” a song I love that would cause any broadcast station in America to get its license pulled by the FCC pretty much as soon as the “you fucked me in the ass” line in the first verse was over. I like that satellite radio understands that as a responsible adult, my world will not come crashing down if I hear a naughty word.
Then on the way back home, Charity spun around for a while and landed on the 60s station and stayed because it was playing Sonny and Cher’s “Baby Don’t Go,” a song she adores. We kept it there for the whole ride home, because this station does an excellent job of mixing the usual suspects with deep tracks and some plain old obscurities, including at least one song that I have flat out never heard before. (Do you know how many days I would have to listen to even a GOOD terrestrial oldies radio station to hear an unfamiliar song? Me neither, because I’d have to shoot myself from “Dancin’ in the Street” overdose.) It’s also thematically appropriate in its presentation, with a series of proper old shouter DJs and station ID jingles recorded by the good folks at PAMS. CDs and iPods don’t ahve those all-important non-musical elements.
I mean, if you’re a total tight-ass control freak who gets troubled by the thought of new and/or unfamiliar music, then satellite radio is even worse for you than it is for the person who only knows the 15 songs on their local FM station’s playlist. But if you’re someone like me who wants to hear a combination of old favorites and new stuff (and specifically if you’re someone likes me who enjoys hearing Keith Olbermann on the Dan Patrick show on ESPN radio every afternoon at 2 but gets crap AM radio reception at home because of interference from the rail yard out back), then XM is a lifesaver.
Nice defense, The Great 48, but I still come back to this point made by Mark:
His opening line is especially effective!
Seriously, as my wife can tell you, the more I resist something, the more likely I will one day embrace it and become its greatest advocate. We’ll see how this one develops.
Yes.
I love good radio and love the opportunity to hear good radio in my car so, in this case, I’ll gladly pay The Man. (I’ve got other means of sticking it to him.)
If I had more time to listen to music, I might be more inclined to care about satellite radio. But, as it is, I have a full-time job where I can’t listen to music, and I play in two bands. I have a backlog of LP’s and CD’s (some bought, some given to me by friends) that I haven’t been able to listen to yet. There’s still plenty of stuff I haven’t heard sitting in my living room; I don’t need to pay for more. And there is a danger of too much input; after a while, are you listening, or consuming?
Isn’t it all about how much time you spend in the car? Radio is perfect for the car, because you can’t do anything else but sit there anyway, and, unless you can afford a Mercedes or a Lexus, there’s so much ambient noise that you can’t really listen seriously to the music of your choice.
Ordinarily I spend very little time in the car, since I have a 5 minute commute. I love it when I travel and can listen to NPR news; I’m so much more informed than usual. And I love Whad’Ya Know? and Wait Wait Don’t Tell Me. But there’s no way I’m going to listen to those or any other kind of talk radio at home, because what am I supposed to do just sit there and stare into space and listen to other people talk. Maybe if I knitted it might work, but for me the car is the perfect environment for talk radio. Music, not so much.
I’d love to hear Dylan’s radio show, but I can’t see getting the whole package just for that. I get XM channels with my DirectTV, but the Dylan thing is in some ‘premium’ category that I don’t get. Is satellite radio actually commercial-free? Or is it like NPR and PBS, which claim to be commercial-free, although they have lots of sponsors whose plugs are limited to the beginnings and endings of shows.
Well, generally, I listen to Wait Wait while I’m making breakfast or doing some other kind of household task. And, sometimes, yeah, I just sit there and stare into space — although even then, I usually have a cup of coffee or something to focus on.
And as I type this right this second, I’m listening to Dan Patrick and Keith Olbermann talking about Curt Schilling’s press conference this morning. Multi-tasking, bitches!
I’m sorry, I just don’t buy it. I fully admit that I am a radio geek. In fact, I seem to be the biggest radio fan on RTH, and I have as many — if not more — fond memories of the great radio stations of my yoof as the next guy. KIMN, the last great AM Top 40 station, when I was a little kid. KBCO, my introduction to freeform and to new wave. KTXT, my first college radio station. Even today, I’ve got great local stations surrounding me (Boston is one of the all-time great radio cities) and I listen to them regularly, AND I’ve got WFMU on the web.
So there are my bona fides: I not only have great radio memories, I’m a bigger fan of most of contemporary radio. So I know what I’m talking about when I say that this quote from Mark:
is absolute bullshit.
XM is better. It is that simple. I don’t care how much you venerate whatever your own personal golden age of radio was: XM is better. It’s not just the lack of commercials, it’s not just the better reception, it’s not just the wider variety of stations. It’s the depth of playlist inside each individual station. There is not an oldies station in the world, not even the late great KOMA, that has the depth of playlist of the decade stations. (Think back: were the radio stations of your youth playing both Cockney Rebel’s “Make Me Smile” *and* the Spinners’ “Games People Play”? I’m guessing not.) Boston’s WGBH has some of the best jazz programming in the country, and it’s not a patch on the depth and variety of any of the four jazz stations. Not one of the hundreds of calcified AOR stations in the country can touch Deep Tracks, and even Top Tracks, the equivalent of the average calcified AOR station, has a better, deeper playlist than most.
All I can figure is that most of the satellite radio haters in RTH land have never actually spent any time with it and merely assume that it sucks as bad as their local FM radio does. I assure you, it does not.
I don’t know what to say about Mr. Mod’s freaky-ass paranoia about THE MAN(!!!!) except to say that THE MAN(!!!!) only puts music on commercial radio stations so you’ll stick around long enough to listen to the ads. Now, unless you’re really deeply into hearing about the new models on sale at your local Chevy dealer for seven minutes at a pop, you at least have to admire the way that satellite radio simplifies the contract between the listener and THE MAN(!!!!): with satellite radio, THE MAN(!!!!) takes your 13 bucks a month directly and therefore allows the listener to hear actual music instead of Bud Light’s 62 minutes of commercials per hour. This is a win/win both for THE MAN(!!!!) and the listener.
Look, the bottom line here is that Mr. Mod is a full-on, dyed-in-the-wool, the leopard-will-never-change-his-spots luddite when it comes to any kind of technology designed (“by the mannnnn… ooohhh…”) to make his multimedia life easier to enjoy. The “logic” he deploys on both the satellite radio and iPod fronts is utter technophobic, vinyl-clad gibberish, as far as I can tell. And I *like* the guy! I say: just let the guy moulder in his cave, and pretend to enjoy the sound of two rocks being bashed together. That’s the only way we can get him off this “technology only makes music worse” kick.
He didn’t like the gated reverb effect or the Yamaha DX-7 synth either.
Who – with the aid of a more technologically savvy friend – may I remind you, led Rock Town Hall from its closed, merely functional beginnings elsewhere to this new, fantastic space that is open to The People?
Who was skeptical of the new technology? The new ways of communicating?
If the mirror fits, LOOK IN IT!
What other list had a Moderator so forthcoming in his ability to be wrong, his willingness to change his mind and yet who suffers so many accusations about his inflexibility?
You’re welcome, BigSteve, for pointing out my occasional instances of being right!
I’m beginning to think some of you care deeply about this issue. Now I truly am mystified. Are we REALLY arguing about music delivery platforms? I find that hard to believe.
Here’s the answer: play XM if you want. Play public radio if you want. Le me play CDs if I want. But don’t try to suggest that I’m missing out on something truly wonderful. I have much better music in my collection than anything I can get on the radio. I mean, that’s why I collected it.
A proposed corollary: don’t try to suggest that I’m some kind of mindless consumerist zombie because I choose to enjoy satellite radio ALONG WITH the music in my collection.
the great 48:
“I’m sorry, I just don’t buy it. I fully admit that I am a radio geek. In fact, I seem to be the biggest radio fan on RTH, and I have as many — if not more — fond memories of the great radio stations of my yoof as the next guy.”
I’d argue my place in your esteemed pantheon, as a kid I kept notebooks of radio playlists and have DJ’d in public radio for 22 years now. They play satellite radio at a cafe I frequent and although there’s always interesting selections coming up, I miss the sound of a DJ sitting around playing records.
The DJs have the format’s requsite attitude but are unmemorable. The sets don’t flow together, they’re too stratified by genre and the DJs sound like bad commercial jocks instead of real music fans. They’ve rendered commercial radio unlistenable (and don’t get me started on NPR…) so I can see why it would be preferable to that. Still, I’d be better off doing my own programming than paying for the satellite thing.
-db