"Valued Corporate #120,345 Employee (B A R R Y)"
Post by Valued Corporate #120,345 Employee (B A R R Y)Post by YKW (ad hoc)Lucky you. Most long-form talk programming on XM is either unavailable
in podcast form or requires a subscription to the program's website.
Like what?
Clark Howard
Ray Lucia
Dr. Joy Brown
Avweb Audiocasts
Click and Clack "Car Talk"
As well as several _excellent_ semi-pro podcasts that aren't aired
anywhere. All free and available when I want to listen! <G>
All wonderful -- hey, I do Levin, "Wait! Wait!" and Hewitt the same way.
But XM also brings in stuff like Handel and Liddy and Ingraham and Beck
and LaPorte that aren't available as free podcasts, and can't-miss shows
like Unmasked and Baseball Confidential and Baseball Beat that aren't
available =anywhere= else. (I imagine AAR show podcasts can't be had for
free, either, despite what their rhetoric would lead you to think.)
Post by Valued Corporate #120,345 Employee (B A R R Y)Some syndicated shows have commercials, but they are easily skipped,
as radio shows have standard time slots for ads. Clark Howard is
commercial-free, but delayed a day or two until it airs, respecting
his broadcast partners.
I do pay for "Money Talk", but XM dropped that show because THEY had
to pay ABC for it. <G>
Last summer, while on vacation, I was simply blown away at the lack of
good talk on XM. Did you ever notice how many shows are XM only (the
marketeers call them "Exclusives")? That's because they're cheap to
produce, with no syndication fees required by popular shows.
Honestly, no. Sure, maybe it's cheap to produce Minors & Majors, or
Rancid Radio, or POTUS 08. But it's definitely not cheap to produce
Artist Confidential. It's =extremely= not cheap to produce Oprah &
Friends.
The point of those shows isn't to produce something cheap; the point is
to produce something that drives people to subscribe, to get something
that they either a) can't get in a reliable or convenient form or b)
can't get =period= elsewhere. But only if the costs of creating this
programming can be shown to produce sufficient revenues to justify their
existence.
Post by Valued Corporate #120,345 Employee (B A R R Y)Ray Lucia has publicly stated on his show that XM won't pay him what
he needs, so no RL for XM. The dropping of "Money Talk" was the last
straw. For years, I was able to hear MT without local sports
pre-emptions on XM.
Honestly, =should= they pay him? Lucia isn't the top money guy in radio.
He's not number two or three. Not even top-five. Probably not even top-
ten, if we count some TV guys/shows offering their audio feeds to radio.
Is he anything resembling a household name? Is he going to drive
subscribers to XM? Enough subscribers to pay for his program? Nah.
Post by Valued Corporate #120,345 Employee (B A R R Y)As I recall XM dropped a bunch of ABC shows at
the same time.
Actually, ABC stopped providing a dedicated channel for XM to carry. ABC
also ceased offering nearly all their syndicated talk programming at the
same time; what little was still available to XM was folded into other
channels' lineups.
Post by Valued Corporate #120,345 Employee (B A R R Y)Post by YKW (ad hoc)Post by Valued Corporate #120,345 Employee (B A R R Y)* If I spend the same per month as I did on satellite radio, I have
plenty of new material, which I can sample before I buy.
What, maybe forty minutes of music each month for the price of an XM
sub? That's "plenty"?
Fair point.
The thing is, with XM I doubt I hear 40 minutes of NEW material every
month that I would bother to listen to again, much less buy.
Post by YKW (ad hoc)Post by Valued Corporate #120,345 Employee (B A R R Y)Did I mention the incredible sound quality compared to satellite?
I'll hold the live XMRO stream up for comparison with 128 kb/s DRM'd
badly-outdated AAC crud any day of the week.
I still get XM, included with my DirecTV subscription, and with
weather data fed to my airplane's GPS system. I compare XM to other
sources on a regular basis.
My complaint with XM is that very few channels are allowed the
bandwidth to sound as good as they should. For instance, Fine Tuning
displayed what could be. The overall experience is a lower quality,
with channels like Squizz sounding downright horrible.
Compared to CD, sure. Compared to iTunes-encodes, maybe. Compared to
terrestrial, very debateable. The only local I'd say sounds better than
its XM counterparts would be our classical station. Most rock and pop
stations are currently processed to sound as flat as possible -- the
better to serve as unobtrusive background sounds -- whereas XM seems to
use at least some form of multi-band processing to maintain a level of
"pop".
Post by Valued Corporate #120,345 Employee (B A R R Y)Post by YKW (ad hoc)If you'd rather lock yourself into the same 1600 songs forever, hey,
that's your business. Me, I'll take the endless possibilities XM gives
me. Not to mention all the news, talk and sports programming I'd also
never hear elsewhere. All for less than the price of a single CD each
month.
Yet you complain, which is why I posted to begin with... <G>
BTW, what happens to your recorded music collection if you cancel your
subscription?
Don't see that happening any time soon but... well, let's just say that,
if it should come to that, I have my ways of saving what I really want to
save. :)
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