Stymied in my quest to find the perfect digital camcorder, I’ve had to look elsewhere for ways to be a good American citizen and increase my credit card debt. The latest gadget to catch my fancy is a satellite radio. These things have been around for a while of course, but as the two services — XM and Sirius — grow they’ve started to offer special, exclusive content above and beyond simply playing commercial-free music. My thinking before was if I just want to hear songs I can stick with my iPod; but I’ve recently started to give satellite radio more attention.I first gave it strong consideration last year after Air America Radio started. No stations in my area carried it, thus I was tied to my computer to listen to their webcasts. However, satellite radio would allow me to listen to AAR’s shows over the air; both XM and Sirius offered it, but Sirius offered the complete line-up while XM pre-empted a show or two to provide different talk shows. Score one for Sirius.
Just a short while ago, Sirius got even more attractive when I found out it would exclusively carry Jimmy Buffett’s Radio Margaritaville webcast [link to RM homepage | link to Sirius’s RM page]. For the last several years, Buffett has downstreamed soundboard audio live from all his concerts, and it would be quite cool to be able to listen to these in better quality. (In fact, Radio Margaritaville debuted on Sirius last night, with a live broadcast from Bristow VA.)
Thus I spent yesterday reading up on user reviews, trying to select which Sirius satellite radio would be good for me, like the Brix Streamer or the Sanyo CRSR-10; finding out installation would still require sticking an antenna on my car and running wires through my trunk; and learning that all the “portable” Sirius receivers require being docked in a “sold separately” boombox. XM has the iPod-like Delphi MyFi (handheld, with earphones, and also capable of recording audio), but the closest Sirius has come apparently is the Xact Rego — which won’t be out till July.
What has completely dashed my plans however is discovering that Air America Radio is apparently not on Sirius anymore. This seems to be confirmed by taking advantage of Sirius’s free online 3-day trial. The AAR shows are still listed, but its channel is inaccessible. According to the comments at Daily Kos, XM made a better deal with AAR and now has exclusive right to them (despite having monkeyed around with their schedule previously). So now I’m like a sports fan torn between siding with Major League Baseball broadcasts on XM or National Football League broadcasts on Sirius.
It looks like I’m back at square one all over again…not far from where I was standing after shopping for a camcorder.
(And it’s not a total loss. WDTW 1310 AM in Detroit now carries Air America programming so I can at least listen in my car; and meanwhile I can also download the shows from the alt.binaries.air-america.radio newsgroup for podcasting purposes. Not to mention still being able to listen to Radio Margaritaville online.)
