Satellite Radio: Turn Right for XM, Left for Sirius

newsmax.com ^ | 11/25/03 | Carl Limbacher

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With Carl Limbacher and NewsMax.com Staff

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Tuesday Nov. 25, 2003 4:30 p.m. EST Satellite Radio: Turn Right for XM, Left for Sirius XM Satellite Radio president and CEO Hugh Panero once touted his company saying, "I think that there are a number of people who are simply dissatisfied with their musical choices on terrestrial radio… The people who love jazz and blues and rock and roll and other kinds of eclectic music like reggae or opera just can't find it.” However, competing for the potential satellite radio audience in the roving U.S. market of some 200 million licensed vehicles has apparently gone beyond appealing to jazz lovers versus rock and roll devotees. XM competitor Sirius, for instance, offers 40 channels of stuff other than music, featuring more news and talk shows than XM. What’s more, the Sirius programming has more choices geared to liberal-minded listeners. XM appeals more to the middle and the right. Left-leaning Sirius has no less than three public radio channels, which tend to appeal to the liberal crowd, while XM doesn't have any. Sirius also features "Sirius Left,” a liberal talk channel. Covering the bases, however, Sirius offers "Sirius Right” as well. XM's stable of talk-show hosts includes conservatives Bill Cunningham, Michael Reagan, and libertarian Glenn Beck. Meanwhile, personality Phil Hendrie pokes fun at both sides of the political debate. Perhaps most telling, Sirius features a channel for the gay community, while XM has an exclusive channel for NASCAR racing buffs and a Playboy station that charges an extra tariff. All things considered, Sirius and XM have just 13 channels in common – for the most part rebroadcasts of cable nets like CNN. The rest comes from exclusive signings – Sirius has deals with NPR, the NBA, the NHL, as well as original programming. Critics have suggested that the varying political bents of the talk shows are defining the real difference between the competing services. When it comes to the musical content, the two services offer the same wide variety – XM channels, however, feature live disk jockeys who take call-in requests. In any event, don’t have an epiphany and switch from liberal to conservative or vice-versa once you bought the hardware for the service of your choice. That hardware is not interchangeable – at least not yet before open-standard radios become available on the market. It’s all about programming, as Sirius and XM ramp up their efforts to attract new subscribers. As more and more car manufacturers install satellite radios in their new models, they're expected to attract 25 million subscribers in the next five years. Whether liberal or conservative, that’s a market to reckon with.

[Paul_B]

My point exactly.

[FreedomCalls]

Listen to XM Radio samples here.

Listen to Sirius radio samples here.

[Musket]

I'm sitting inside a steel/concrete building listening to XM, with the antenna on my desk, under my PC monitor. Reception is excellent.

You must be in a one story building with a thin roof. I'm always in multi-storied buildings.Or maybe not, according to Yo-Yo(see below).

All you need for an indoor antenae is a South-facing window.

In a sky scraper that would probaby be about 10 percent of the occupants.

Both Sirus and XM have built thousands of terrestrial repeaters in urban areas and along tunnels, etc. to supplement the satellite signal.

Now that's interesting. But not enough to make me pay 10 bucks a month to play hide-and-seek with a signal that may not even be there. Acutally I do that now - for free!

[Keith in Iowa]

>>I'm having trouble imagining Playboy Radio.

I was scanning the thread in hopes someone would explain that one...

[woofer]

I'm having trouble imagining Playboy Radio

Yeah, how erotic can listening to the photographer's instruction for the model.

Oooo - Baby! Work it. WORK IT!

The camera loves you, doll.

[miele man]

On the Hits by decade channels, are tunes from the 40s and 50s offered? Thanks. I'm finding that the more I listen to music from the 40s and early 50s, the more I'm beginning to disengage from music of my own generation, e.g, 60s, especially the protest driven, acid inspired drivel. At least folks in the 40 could really sing and had talent.

[Pete-R-Bilt]

here try here, they make the antennaes and acc. for both services.

don't let anyone oversell you on accessories, the antennaes are all comparable (except amplified).

they try to sell drivers this big tall ugly mast ant. and after talking to a Turk tech i found that the mast antennaes are top loads, meaning that the signal feeds through the top of the load "DING!" I just put the tablespoon sized antenna i use on the highest clear viewing place on my vehicle "duh!"

as for buildings steel rienforced buildings and excessive floressant lighting creat problems for reception on the non amplified home antenna, use one of the extention cables listed on this site and get your antenna to the south side of the building and you should be good to go...

http://www.circuits2u.com/page_header/pageheader0005.htm

circuit city and best have most of the radios and some of the accys, but most of thier people are idiots about sat radio and barely know about anything else. the wonderful thing about minimum wage employees, you always get what you pay for.

there are improvments that both svc's will fine tune in the future, but personally i see XM turning into the market master and ultimatly i see them going into a two way service including local weather feeds, and pay per listen.

hmm.


maybe even the next competitor to on star...

yea i admit it i've been with XM since they were six months old, almost a half a half a century

[AJ504]

I have XM and am giving my daughter a receiver for Xmas. I travel constantly, and am also tired of the drivel on the AM stations and the commercials on FM... when you can find decent radio.

I love all kinds of music and can find it all. If you want Sinatra music, it's there! Music by the decades! Jazz! All types of Country Music! Several sports channels, including ESPN and FoxSports...and of course, the News Channels. I usually am on my way back to my motel when Brit comes on, so I listen to him at 7 (eastern).

I have mine mounted with air-vent clips and put in my own FM modulator (have the Delphi SkyFi unit), and remove it to put into the portable boombox at night. DO NOT LET THE KIDS at Circuit City or Best Buy install your unit!!! Let a professional do it!

As a constant radio listener around the country, it's GREAT! Give it time, I am sure more talk show hosts will be signing deals to get on XM/Sirius... after all, there's a million XM listeners who are tuning the commercial stations out!

[SamAdams76]

I'm on the verge of paying $10 a month for satellite radio because I'm disgusted with the lack of variety on commercial radio stations and also with the endless bombardment of commercials and useless chatter, traffic reports, weather, etc.

Now I can handle a few commercials but there are now times when an FM station plays as many as 10 commercials in a row. That's excessive. And now most FM stations try to be all things to all people and as a result, they do everything poorly. My former favorite FM station now fills their drive-time hours with news snippets, canned weather reports and traffic reports that never really tell you anything except that "everything is jammed, seek alternate routes." On top of that, the drive-time radio jocks all think they have to be Howard Stern so now instead of playing music, they do skits and pranks and other crap like that. You are lucky to hear three songs in any given half hour during drive time on FM radio.

So yeah, $10 a month is going to be worth it to me.

[Elliott Jackalope]

I used to listen to a LOT of talk radio, and I finally gave it up because of all of the non-stop, grating, irritating, endlessly repetitive ads. I was a regular listened to KGO and KSFO radio in the California Bay Area until I finally overdosed on all of the freakin' ads! Over and over and over again with the same stupid ads, over and over and over and over and over until you want to SCREAM! It got to the point where radio was broadcasting about seven minutes of programming, then five minutes of ads! I finally totally gave up on radio a few years ago, and have not listened to it since. I would rather eat bugs than listen to commercial radio again!

I did find a great alternative in streaming radio stations on MP3.com, but those are going away now. I'm hoping that another service will come along to host un-signed artists on the internet, and provide USER-PROGRAMMABLE "stations", like MP3 used to do. I created dozens of different stations on MP3.com, like "Best of the Big Sounds 1-5", "AEGIS Network 1-6", "American Metalcore" and others besides, and listened to dozens more. Anyone know of anything like that currently on the internet?

[stands2reason]

I have digital cable, and I enjoy the music stations we get. Lots of variety.

[stands2reason]

Hip-hop/R&B/urban

No need to break up that category apparently. Al Green is NWA is James Brown is Beyonce Knowles is the Brothers Johnson.

At least I have a classic R&B station on my digital cable (on right now Dazz---Brick) which plays some good stuff, but what is with the stuff from 1986 being played? There oughta be a law.

[mhking]

No need to break up that category apparently.

No, they do break it up into about six different categories (I looked into it for my car - I'm so damn sick of Clear Channel!)

[JoeFromSidney]

I compared both when I bought. I ended up buying Sirius because it didn't have commercials on their in-house programs. However, that may not be a significant factor for other buyers. I enjoy Sirius on my drives around town and to nearby towns. It was great on a drive from Ohio to CA last year, when I didn't have to change stations except to get weather or news. (Switched to Weather because there were tornadoes in the area where I was driving.) Also got good reception on a drive through Canada. There are occasional dropouts for bridges, and no reception in parking garages. All in all, I think satellite radio is worth the money. The choice between XM and Sirius will depend mostly on your interests. Both give clear reception under a wide range of circumstances.

[185JHP]

XM is a great service. Great music channels, excellent talk radio (CSPAN, Fox News, Batchelor and Alexander, Savage once in awhile), and good tech support people. I recommend it. Well worth 10 bucks a month.

[185JHP]

"Hank's Place", on XM, has excellent classic Christian music on Wed. and Sun. night. I expect they'll do better as they get more popular, with other channels.

[Paul_B]

Hopefully they will do better as they leave their debt behind. They need to migrate away from the Top 40 format on many of the channels.

Meanwhile, I've discovered Nashville, on 11, which has a lot of edifying music.

Thanks for the tip on Hank's Place.

[babaloo]

I bought the Sirius system for my husband's van before our Christmas trip from Iowa to California. Having made the drive before and experiencing a dearth of stations on vast stretches of highway this past trip was delightful. We listened to Fox most of the time but the music stations were good as was some of the comedy stuff. On the way home we listened to ESPN radio as it was bowl season and that was fun too.