It Came From Out of the Sky

I’ve been a Sirius satellite radio subscriber for about a year. I haven’t made a big deal out of it on this blog—as a guy who makes part of his living from a terrestrial radio company, I suppose I could be accused of consorting with the competition by listening to satellite. But in approving the Sirius acquisition of XM recently, the FCC has let me off the hook. The ruling says that competition still exists despite the consolidation of the services, because people can choose from several entertainment options—satellite and terrestrial radio and iPods and CD players or even the sound of the vent fan in the car. That’s the sort of creative thinking that keeps our consolidation-happy economy rolling. It’s like saying that from now on, the government will license only one brewery. It will brew lots of different kinds of beer—perhaps not an unlimited number, but a lot, so chances are you’ll find something you like. If you don’t, or you don’t want to do business with that lone brewery, you’ll have to switch to scotch. So although I’m skeptical of the FCC’s reasoning, at least I’ve got their assurance that listening to satellite in the car is no more betraying my employer than listening to a cassette is.

The New York Times has a decent overview of the merger’s likely direction here. The FCC put a three-year cap on subscription prices, and required the new company to make space available for minority programming. The services differentiated themselves mainly by their unique offerings, such as Howard Stern and the NFL on Sirius, and Oprah Winfrey and Major League Baseball on XM. These will be lumped together on the new service. That’s an awful lot of star power to make available indiscriminately to anybody who signs up. So it’s easy to foresee a time when the combined company places their most attractive offerings on premium programming tiers, like cable TV does now. Duplicated channels will be dropped—each service has a jazz channel and a blues channel and channels devoted to various musical decades, and so on. And if you decide you don’t like the way it all shakes out, you’ll have to switch to scotch.

Although I have the capability to receive 170 channels, like most subscribers, I listen to only a few regularly: Pure Jazz 72, Sirius Blues 74, Totally 70s, and the Vault, a deep-cuts classic-rock channel, get the most attention from me. I also listen to the NFL channel and the ESPN Radio feed now and then. I suppose I like the idea of having 170 choices even if I don’t take advantage of it all that much. But the stations I like do a good job with the music I want, and on a long-distance driving trip, it’s absolutely worth what it costs.

If you want an interesting peek inside Sirius and its programming, check out Dogstar Radio. Should you happen to be a Sirius subscriber (or if you sign up for a free trial at the Sirius website), there are a couple of interesting programs in the lineup for the weekend now in progress. Walter Becker and Donald Fagen of Steely Dan will be guest DJs on Pure Jazz 72 tonight (August 2) at 9pm Central. The show will be rebroadcast tomorrow (August 3) at 4pm Central and Monday at 11am Central. Tomorrow at 8pm Central, Totally 70s will repeat its weekly Satellite Survey countdown, which features the Top 30 from a specific week of the 1970s each weekend. This week’s edition is guest-hosted by Randy Bachman of the Guess Who and BTO. I caught a little of the show on its first airing this morning, and Bachman’s stories about the music people he knew in the 70s were fascinating. The countdown features the Top 30 from this week in 1976.

I told you we’d end up back in 1976 eventually, didn’t I?