Last night, I was driving home from having drinks with a friend, and I was not in the mood for whatever CD I had in at the time, so I thought I would see what was playing over on trusty XM. A little background… I have had XM ever since I got my Acura, back in August of 2005, because it came in the car, and well, I guess it is one of those things that I COULD live without, but since it is BUILT IN, I have kept my subscription current. It does get annoying though, that some of the channels have commercials; especially since their claim is radio free of commercials. Well, for the most part, they are right, but there are a few that play ‘em anyway. Overall, it’s alright, and not something I consider to be a deal breaker at this point.
Anyway, I was really excited when Sirius and XM merged earlier this year, because I have heard that Sirius has several channels that I might be interested in; specifically, BBC 1. My friend Deb got a new Jeep not too long ago, and she has Sirius built in, and she has continually fueled my jealousy that she gets BBC 1, because the programming is pretty great for someone that loves brit-pop as much as she and I both do.
Alright, sorry for the tangent; back to last night… I started flipping through the preset channels, and I notice that Upop (a BBC 1 knockoff) had been replaced by BBC 1!! Apparently, XM quietly changed all of their channels (some stayed the same) at some point yesterday, and I couldn’t be happier. I LOVE BBC 1, and it is just one more reason to keep my XM subscription now! As for the other changes, I haven’t really explored them yet, but if you are interested, here’s the 411 on all of the changes.
This morning on my way in to work, some slow guy called in to one of the channels, and asked, “what’s the deal with the channels?”, and the DJ told him about the changes in the line up and told him to check out the website, but apparently she overwhelmed him, because he couldn’t grasp why these changes were made. Some people just don’t get the technologies, do they?
Thank you XM!! Hooray for BBC 1 in my car, and in my life!
I have mixed feelings about it. There are some stations I look forward to checking out; others I’ll mourn the loss of. I’m willing to give it a try, but overall, I was a very happy XM subscriber, and think that the merger has been a total mistake, and isn’t going to achieve anything but a profitable buyout for some investors and executives, and an upset customer base. Sirius has fucked this transition up completely, and I don’t appreciate finally being told today, on the day of the switchover, what the new channel line up would be. And I’m sure that XM’s former employees probably didn’t appreciate the way that Sirius didn’t bother to tell them that they were being fired at all (many of them found out by someone randomly logging on to their HR portal and happening to see that his/her job had been ended as of that day).
I will add that I look forward to having BBC-1 in my Accord. I’ve been a fan of British radio for many years now.
Dang…and I was going to write about my joy of now having the best of both worlds. They swapped the Beat for BPM, and I couldn’t be happier! Make sure you check out OutQ on 109 if you all get that.
So, great: now we have BBC1, NPR…and a bunch of channels that suck. Outlaw Country is no X-Country, Lithium is no Lucy. And the new XMU is just awful. The playlists have none of the depth or breadth of the old channels, the DJs suck, and everything is so damn sanitized. So goodbye Sirius-XM…hello Slacker.
Steven, that is awful about the firings. WTF people!?!? Also, it looks like you and Brian are a house divided by satellite radio!!!!