It started with the traffic report.

Traffic in Atlanta is sometimes enough to separate you from your sanity. When I told someone we were driving to Chattanooga last weekend, the person asked "Isn't that an awfully long ride?" (It's about 90 minutes.) Er, no, especially when you consider that it's taken me that long to get the 28 miles home many a night, especially on the days before a holiday; the traffic jams right before Thanksgiving are enough to make one weep in frustration. I was tired of the local traffic reports, since I had to listen to what seemed like hours of DJ's babbling between reports. The least annoying was Kim Peterson, which I found really sad because "the Kimmer" can be a complete maniac. Then when they did get to the report, half the time the DJ was bullshitting (excuse me) with the helicopter pilot. Shut up and tell me why traffic's stopped dead on 285 Westbound, willya? I started saying I would give $10 per month for a dedicated traffic report station.

When XM first started and had their promotional cards up at Media Play, I didn't give them a second glance because all they were pushing was their music, and most of it was rock and rap which I didn't care a ding about. Sirius piqued my interest when they premiered because they had an Old-Time Radio channel, but I still hated the thought of the expense of buying (and installing, back then) the equipment and then the monthly charge.

Then several things happened: both XM and Sirius came out with portable units that could be plugged into your existing radio and I noticed both of them had traffic reports and XM also got itself an Old-Time Radio channel. Then, when we were cleaning out Mom's house last year, we went to BJ's and found a big Sirius pack, both the home kit and the car kit, for a good price, and in addition a $30 rebate. Remembering our drive up switching from NPR station to NPR station in a depressing search for something decent to listen to, we both grabbed one and had the service started on both and one of them installed on my car for the drive home.

It was okay for me, for a while. I had my traffic report, which was Atlanta and Boston sharing a channel (leaving me to roll my eyes when they reported the Tobin Bridge/Callahan Tunnel/Ted Williams Tunnel were backed up again; when aren't they?), later changed to Atlanta and Miami. I used to listen to Jerry Doyle's talk show on the way home. Occasionally I would listen to OTR.

But little things started to irritate me, starting with the traffic channel I'd wished for. They always promoted that the reports were every four minutes. However, the reports weren't new every four minutes; they would repeat a report at least three times before going to a new report, which meant you were driving directly toward a stoppage frequently. Also, the reports were often hideously inaccurate. The last one I recall was driving home in February and encountering a traffic stoppage. Dutifully I was listening to my traffic report and only after twenty minutes and I was coming abreast of the accident (it was a small panel truck on its roof) did they actually report it. Well, they sort of reported it. The vehicle was on I-285 Westbound in the breakdown lane. They said it was on I-285 Eastbound in the left lane. Big difference, guys.

The nadir of the sloppy traffic reporting was actually about a month after we'd gotten the radios. We were heading home the Saturday evening of DragonCon, having made arrangements to meet Clay and Ann Weaver at our house and then go out to dinner. Traffic stopped dead on I-75 North just outside the perimeter. I mean stopped, with people getting out of their cars after a while. We put the Sirius traffic report on and for an entire hour the traffic guy blatted about how the traffic was running smoothly on I-75 north and south while we stood there and watched a helicopter land on the freeway to medevac someone out to Grady Hospital. We kept listening even after we'd left the site. Not a word did they say. Um, guys...

Near the end of the year Sirius added some new channels, but did so by getting rid of other channels. They added a New Age channel, which I had hoped for, but killed the 1940s Swing channel and combined it with the Standards channel, which I adored—it played all the music I had heard growing up: Sinatra, Dean Martin, Perry Como, Bing Crosby, Rosemary Clooney, Doris Day. I liked the 40s channel, too, but sometimes I wanted to just listen to 40s music and sometimes to just the standards. Evidently someone thought this "old music" was all alike. No, Standards and Swing are two completely different animals with a little bit of overlapping. (Sadly, the New Age channel was depressing. I was expecting Windham Hill and Narada, maybe some George Winston, David Arkenstone, material like that. Every time I turned it on it sounded as if they were playing funeral music.) They also had two conservative channels and two liberal channels, one of which was Air America. They dropped Air America and therefore dropped one of their conservative channels, combining the most listened to programs on both channels into one channel. Bye-bye Jerry Doyle. I didn't like any of the conservative commentators (or the liberal ones, for that matter), but I liked Jerry because he was not conservative, but more libertarian; he complained about Left and Right alike and most of the time he was more matter of fact than ranting.

The nadir was this year's Christmas music. In 2004, when Dish Network added Sirius music channels to their lineup, Sirius converted one of their channels (I recall it being what they consider the Easy Listening channel) to Christmas music. I quite enjoyed it and looked forward to last Christmas. Ugh. This time it was StarLight or StarTime or whatever they converted and their playlist was severely limited. From my blog last December: "...when you have a continuous music station and you are hearing the same songs repeated at 2:30 p.m. that you heard earlier at 10 a.m., your playlist ain't anywhere near big enough. I have heard Springsteen's "Merry Christmas" (or whatever), that annoyingly-repetitive-after-one-hearing "Wonderful Christmas," the John Lennon song, Eartha Kitt's and Madonna's "Santa Baby," Josh whasisname's "Believe" ["Believe" was on so many times that I'm convinced Sirius was receiving kickbacks to play the song to promote the release of Polar Express], Gene Autry doing "Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer" and "Here Comes Santa Claus," and a bunch of others so many times that I can look at what's playing (while listening to a large variety of different music on the two local radio channels) and say "Oh, it's the Ronettes singing "Frosty" again." There are other cuts from the albums these songs are on...the Gene Autry album I bought for James has 12 songs on it; why don't they play the other ten? Barry Manilow did a whole Christmas album; why do they only play one of his songs? Bing Crosby did a lot more Christmas songs than "White Christmas" and "Do You Hear What I Hear?" And there's a whole TransSiberian CD—heck, there are two—besides "Christmas Eve Sarajevo."

The absolutely stupid part is that between CDs, records, tapes, and MP3s, I probably have at least four days of Christmas music before anything would repeat. And I don't have any of the recent popular albums like Amy Grant, Barenaked Ladies, NSync, Charlotte Church, etc.—heck, I don't even have a Dean Martin or any Frank Sinatra or Doris Day and only one Johnny Mathis and not all of Bing Crosby and Perry Como. If I bought all I wanted, I could probably have seven days worth of music that would never repeat. And Sirius can't spring for more than seven hours worth of music? Sheesh."

This spring XM had an offer on their website that you could try out some of their music channels for three days for free. So since I was sitting at work with nothing better to listen to I signed up. I loved what I heard.

A week or so later Brandsmart had XM's "Roady XT" unit on sale for $38.00 with a $30 rebate. Let's see, music I love and a radio for $8. Yes, God, I'm listening...

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. . . . . noted and logged by Linda at 11:10:00 AM

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