Sirius and XM Radio Owners Get Sucker-Punched

I, for one, was a big proponent of the merger of these two stations, as it was pretty clear we’d lose satellite radio all together in the near future, and terristrial radio has gotten even worse than it was when they came into power. I’m currently an XM subscriber, but once owned Sirius…both were terrific in different ways.

But this week, the newly merged SiriusXM did an unannounced station overhaul that has owners raving mad. If you’re one of them, check out the article below and find out what the heck’s going on, and why you probably will not like it.

http://consumerist.com/5087231/sirus-xm-merger-reveals-true-face-fewer-channels-and-sanitized-programming

and here:
http://www.fool.com/investing/general/2008/11/12/sirius-xm-has-crossed-the-line.aspx

Excerpts:

First off, why such secrecy? Millions of subscribers were blindsided yesterday. No announcements of any kind were made over the air to let people know what was going on. To them, everything was fine on Tuesday, butall of a sudden on Wednesday, their favorite channel was deleted or changed fundamentally. This was a breach of trust between the provider and the consumer. We are the subscribers. We are paying for this service. We deserve a voice over what it is we want to hear. More importantly, we deserve input about programming we are willing to pay for.

 

 

Second, we the consumers, Congress, and the FCC were assured that allowing the merger would increase diversity and choice. Wednesday’s change showed you acted in bad faith. On the XM side, we lost 75% of the Spanish music choice. To clump together the previous 4 genres of music offered by Aguila, Viva, Caricia, and Caliente into one channel shows either cultural ignorance or contempt for diversity. My congressional representatives will be hearing from me about this.

 

 

Third, the new censorship. I bought Sirius to free myself from the shackles of FM. Hot Jamz has been neutered into “The Heat,” essentially a satellite version of my local R&B station. I simply couldn’t listen to it today. The songs were heavily edited and censored. This is the antithesis of what Sirius once stood for, what bringing Howard from FM symbolized. Fact is, urban music is written in the vernacular. What “The Heat” did to Hot Jamz is an insult.