More on XM

[Nostaticatall]

What XM agreed to was not to have reports produced locally and fed to 
area listeners via their land-based repeaters.  It looks like XM is 
expanding the number of channels and each major city will have a channel 
with local content.  All of the content will be produced at their main 
facility and can be accessed by any XM subscriber anywhere.  So, Boston 
will have it's own weather/traffic/news channel (along with 20 other 
cities) and you can get it whether you're on 128 or on the 405 in LA. 
 The repeaters won't be broadcasting any unique programming that isn't 
already available on the main feed.  The NAB is just upset that XM is 
horning in on their territory--local information.

Mike Thomas

Howard Glazer wrote:

>As I understand it, XM found a loophole in its agreement with the NAB to
>allow for the local weather/traffic service. The exact nature of the
>loophole is a matter of conjecture -- I've seen various attempts to
>explain it -- but it apparently has something to do with the programming
>coming from the satellite to the repeater rather than being originated
>in the local market and fed to the repeater by microwave or landline.
>Sneaky, but legal, as I understand it.
>
>XM -- and its rival, Sirius -- have bandwidth to spare; they've chosen
>to limit their streams to about 100 to preserve audio quality on their
>music channels. The talk/news/sports channels on XM sound very
>compressed and tinny, which is the way the weather/traffic channels will
>likely sound. That sort of audio would be unacceptable on a music
>stream, so those streams get a little more room to spread out. Adding a
>couple of dozen narrow weather/traffic channels probably won't affect
>musical audio quality significantly. The hope is that, as compression
>technology advances, the quality will eventually improve even with the
>addition of channels.
>
>I've been an XM subscriber for about a year and enjoy its musical range
>immensely. Unfortunately, it's sounding less and less like radio and
>more and more like Music Choice. Each round of cost cutting seems to
>cost on-air personalities their jobs. Right now, most of the music
>streams are either jukebox-like song-after-song affairs with liners and
>sweepers, or hosted by one person who is voicetracked 100 percent of the
>time. The most talent assigned to any one channel is three announcers,
>and they generally have one live shift each weekday with the rest
>voicetracked. I'd imagine XM is a non-union shop...
>
>Howard
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