SatRad vs. Broadcast vs. DIY

[Bob DeMattia]

Sirium XM came installed in my car with a free 1-yr subscription.
About the only things I ever listen to are some of the produced-for-TV
cable channels.

I've tried to listen to the music channels, but it's like listening
to an automated station most of the time.  The DJs, when they have
them, sound voice-tracked.  There's no sense of currency.  Maybe the its
lack of a local stories or local weather forecast; there's just something
missing.

So while I still have access to these stations, most of the time I find
myself listening to broadcast.

The one major exception is when driving through areas like central NH
or rural PA, where it becomes annoying that the flea-power stations
they have in the smaller markets only last for 20 to 30 minutes at a
time.

When I'm not in the mood for commercials, I have a 4Gb USB stick that
plugs into a USB port on my dash.  Set the player to random and it
plays from a collection of 250+ tracks, all of which I like.  No DJs,
but no  bad songs either.  This is far superior than anything XM has
to offer.

Another problem with XM is the compression.  There just doesn't seem to
be as much "umph" to the sound.   The compression on the non-music
channels is even worse.

-Bob




On Mon, Jun 4, 2012 at 7:53 AM, Sid Schweiger <sid@wrko.com> wrote:

> "the formats on Sirius/XM that get ANY ratings at all are the ones that
> duplicate the broadcast formats available to anyone on AM/FM."
>
> The only format on SiriusXM that gets any ratings at all, according to
> Eastlan (the only company that includes satellite radio in its local
> ratings, in the few markets in which it operates), is Howard 100, Howard
> Stern's main channel.  No other satrad channels get enough mentions to meet
> Eastlan's minimum reporting standards, and Arbitron stopped rating
> satellite radio in 2008.
>
> There is NO satellite channel that duplicates an OTA broadcast station.
>  Some of them come close in programming content, but none of them carry
> commercials (and the five- to seven-minute stop sets that go along with it)
> and all the other clutter that OTA music formats must deal with.  I can
> understand why some people think that satrad is evocative of radio's past,
> when you could actually hear music on a music-formatted station without
> having to wade through all the other formatics, but the idea of paying for
> radio hasn't taken hold yet, and probably never will on a mass scale.
>
> Sid Schweiger
> IT Manager, Entercom New England
> 20 Guest St / 3d Floor
> Brighton MA  02135-2040
>
>