With all the moaning and groaning over changes to Sirius and frets over its demise I wanted to say a little something positive for a change. Before I start let me just preface all this by saying I have been a big complainer about some of the changes.
This weekend my wife and I took a 4 hour trip in her car which does not have satellite radio. Let me just say I felt like I had been transported back into radio hell. We started out by listening to country music since that seems to be my wife's favorite right now. I like some country but not enough to listen to it for almost 2 hours. I will say that when we take my car, the country station rarely gets turned on because I can find other stations that we both can agree with. That is hard to do with FM radio.
Now listening to regular radio for the 4 hour trip back and forth also made me realize one other reason I hate terrestrial radio, COMMERCIALS!!! Every damn station we listened to would play 3-4 songs then have 5 minutes of commercials. I know they have to make money to survive but I still don't care to hear about the local car dealership, restaurant, bar, etc. It is nice to listen to a station and never have to worry once about hearing some ad. Nothing but music and maybe the occasional DJ banter.
Another thing about regular radio that I don't have to worry about with Sirius is having to change stations because after a bit you lose the FM stations signal and now have to search for a new one. Nope, my Sirius radio is hardwired so I can drive form here to California if I want never having to change stations once unless I decide to do so.
The final thing that made me so glad my car has Sirius is the lack of choices on terrestrial radio. On the drive home I tried finding a rock station I could listen to. Man was this hard. None of the stations were specialized like, Octane, Hair Nation, Boneyard, Classic Vinyl, etc. The regular FM stations would mix many more types of rock together on one station than any Sirius station does. I would get Shinedown or Apocolyptica but then have to deal with U2, The Rolling Stones, Rush etc. Oh and if I wanted to hear anything like Iron Maiden, Motorhead, or 80's hair bands, good luck. The fact Sirius has all types of rock music and splits these different types into their own stations just blow regular FM away.
So the whole trip just reaffirmed my allegiance to Sirius. That is not say I would never get rid of it. Too high a cost for the service and changing all the stations I like to crap could make me get rid of it. But right now as I sit here typing this I wonder what the hell I would do for decent radio stations if Sirius ever goes belly up.
This weekend my wife and I took a 4 hour trip in her car which does not have satellite radio. Let me just say I felt like I had been transported back into radio hell. We started out by listening to country music since that seems to be my wife's favorite right now. I like some country but not enough to listen to it for almost 2 hours. I will say that when we take my car, the country station rarely gets turned on because I can find other stations that we both can agree with. That is hard to do with FM radio.
Now listening to regular radio for the 4 hour trip back and forth also made me realize one other reason I hate terrestrial radio, COMMERCIALS!!! Every damn station we listened to would play 3-4 songs then have 5 minutes of commercials. I know they have to make money to survive but I still don't care to hear about the local car dealership, restaurant, bar, etc. It is nice to listen to a station and never have to worry once about hearing some ad. Nothing but music and maybe the occasional DJ banter.
Another thing about regular radio that I don't have to worry about with Sirius is having to change stations because after a bit you lose the FM stations signal and now have to search for a new one. Nope, my Sirius radio is hardwired so I can drive form here to California if I want never having to change stations once unless I decide to do so.
The final thing that made me so glad my car has Sirius is the lack of choices on terrestrial radio. On the drive home I tried finding a rock station I could listen to. Man was this hard. None of the stations were specialized like, Octane, Hair Nation, Boneyard, Classic Vinyl, etc. The regular FM stations would mix many more types of rock together on one station than any Sirius station does. I would get Shinedown or Apocolyptica but then have to deal with U2, The Rolling Stones, Rush etc. Oh and if I wanted to hear anything like Iron Maiden, Motorhead, or 80's hair bands, good luck. The fact Sirius has all types of rock music and splits these different types into their own stations just blow regular FM away.
So the whole trip just reaffirmed my allegiance to Sirius. That is not say I would never get rid of it. Too high a cost for the service and changing all the stations I like to crap could make me get rid of it. But right now as I sit here typing this I wonder what the hell I would do for decent radio stations if Sirius ever goes belly up.
Last edited:
