XM Ben attended the Rolling Stones concert Monday night (DC) and managed to get backstage where he had his photo taken spooning Ron Wood. I think that qualifies as a Brush with Near Greatness.
It flashed me back to 1964 (my sophomore year in high school) when the Rolling Stones were all over the radio. We had never heard anything remotely like them. How can they possibly be touring 40 years later?
PS: That’s been peeping out from behind Ron Wood
The American Red Cross and XM Satellite Radio have joined forces to launch Red Cross Radio, a 24-hour, nationwide XM channel to provide help and information for Hurricane Katrina victims, Red Cross staff and volunteers along the Gulf Coast, and other Red Cross workers across the country. Former Learfielder and Jeff City expat Ben Krech played a big role in getting the project airborne.
This is just a very different listening experience. The player displays the artist and title currently playing each of my preset channels. Listening can be as passive or interactive as mood dictates. And the audio quality (on my DSL connection) is pretty amazing. Radio good enough to pay for.
XM Satellite Radio announced Monday it has signed a multi-year content agreement with Air America Radio, making XM the exclusive satellite radio network for the left-leaning radio network. Financial terms were not disclosed. When the deal begins in May, Air America Radio will no longer air on Sirius Satellite Radio, which has 1.2 million subscribers to XM’s nearly 3.8 million.
Have you seen Left of the Dial, the excellent HBO documentary about the start-up of Air America? Painful but I could not look away.
Two interesting nuggets from (still another) NTY story on satellite radio. 1) Total (XM + Sirius) subscribers will probably surpass eight million by the end of the year, “making satellite radio one fo the fastest-growing technologies ever – faster, for example than cellpones. 2) Steven Van Zandt (E Street Band and Sopranos) programs two music channels for Sirius.