Spent about 18 hours behind the wheel last week (Jefferson City, MO…Des Moines, IA…Indianapols, IN…Jefferson City). Such a journey would once have been a butt-numbing drag. Having 100 channels of news, music, talk and comedy made the hours fly by. I can tell that folks are getting a little tired of hearing me rave about XM but it’s hard not to talk about this. Most common question is: How often do you lose the signal? Uh, never. Sure, if I stop under an overpass the signal goes away but that’s pretty easy to avoid. And the quality is just amazing. Like blogging, XM is just one of those things that has to be experienced. PS: The Indiana State Fair turned out to be all work and no play. PPS: Back to Des Moines on Thursday for Gnomedex.
Tag Archives: XM Radio
XM Radio adding a book channel
They’re calling it Sonic Theater and promising “Audio books and radio dramas for all tastes.” Can’t quite picture how this will work but it’s a free channel, so we’ll see. My newest favorite channel is The Loft. Acoustic rock, I think. Heard a James Taylor song today that (again) I’ve never heard before. Missed the title. One lyric caught my ear: “Wild with expectation, on the edge of being old.” That’s me in nine words. Tried to find the song but gave up.
XM Satellite Radio Update
I’m still mindlessly surfing the channels. They give you a little remote so you’re less likely to crash while doing this. I really like the…what do we call them? Jocks? DJ’s? Talent? They’re there, but not too there. I’ve noticed that I’m driving less aggressively. In less of a hurry. No doubt, because I am enjoying my time in the car more. Early favorites: Fred, Top Tracks, The Joint, Soul Street, The Groove, CNN Headline News.
Beyond AM. Beyond FM.
I subscribed to XM Satellite Radio today. The idea of “subscribing” to radio still feels a little funny. I got in the car, turned it on and punched up one of the 100 channels. It was Jimi Hendrix singing “Like A Rolling Stone” from the Monterey Pop Festival. I honestly don’t think I’ve ever heard that version on the radio before. It’s too early to offer any useful comments on the service because I was punching through the channels like Tom Hanks running through the toy story in Big. A snippet of an interview with Melissa Etheridge interview on the E! channel… a rousing gospel (soul, not country) number on one of the Urban channels… CNN Headline news. I had to stop and come inside. I have a few long road trips coming up so I can really evaluate the service. Oh, the audio quality was pretty amazing. Stay tuned.
XM Satellite Radio
Next Tuesday I’m scheduled to have an XM satellite radio installed in my 4-Runner. If you haven’t seen the TV commercials or billboards, it’s a new subscription radio service that offers 100 plus channels of digital music and information for about 10 bucks a month. The line-up of news channels is pretty amazing: USA Today, Fox News, CNN Headline News, Weather Channel, CNBC, BBC, C-Span. I don’t know anyone that has the service yet and that sort of surprises me.
The parallels to cable TV are obvious. I remember when cable was first introduced and people asked, “Why would you pay for TV when you can get it for free?!” The answer seems equally obvious these days. HBO alone gives me Band of Brothers, The Soproanos, Six Feet Under, Sex and the City, Oz, The Wire, Dennis Miller and on and on. I have no idea if satellite radio will catch on. Or what impact –if any– it might have on traditional radio.
For me it’s about choices. The Web has spoiled me in this regard. I don’t want to listen to what “most of the people” want to listen to. I want to listen to what I want to (know many good reggae stations?). And I’ll pay to do so. On a recent 15 hour drive from Florida to Missouri, I found a few radio stations I liked but I quickly drove out of range and back into “radio wasteland.” I never really thought Internet radio was much of a challenge to traditional radio. I’m not so sure about this.