Sirius

Ok, I don't want to start a flame war about how AAR needs to make money or what not, but my year subscription for Sirius just expired and I called to cancel.. I told the guy on the phone the reason I'm cancelling is because they used to have two left leaning channels, and now that are down to one. he checked the new schedule set to roll out Sept 27 (or so, I don't remember the exact date) and he told me that there is not going to be another left leaning channel added to the lineup, just that the Talk Left will have new programming on it.

So I cancelled.

They didn't even try to convience me to stay, though, they probably realized they couldn't since my reason for leaving was that their left content was lacking

They are counting on Stern to bring in the revenue, and he probably will. He as about 13 million listeners, and will probably get 3 million to go over to Sirius. At 13 bucks a pop, even if they are paying Stern 100 million a year, it still makes business sense

however, they should have also kept AAR, and that would have also made business sense

listens to Howard Stern?? He's as f'd up as Limbaugh - in a different way, of course. But maybe even creepier... if that's possible.

business is business, but I do believe Sirius should have tried to keep the AAR crowd, they could have done that by opening a second progressive channel with full Thom Hartman, and Stephanie Miller

If XM tried to create a separate channel to move Alan Colmes and Ed Schultz to and to recruit Stephanie Miller, Thom Hartmann, and others to, then they'd feel the need to create a separate channel themselves to "measure up". Since XM doesn't appear to be going that route but instead moving Schultz to ASK and potentially Colmes there or somewhere else, they feel less pressure to create a second channel now. As far as I'm concerned, that makes MP3 players and podcasting (or "mp3 casting") the winner. I'll get far more choices, and I won't have have of the "delayed" broadcasts these guys have to do now to get all of this stuff to fit on one channel. If I'm going to have it delayed to be "listen radio", I might as well get more choice as to what I listen to at any time.

and I hear as soon as Colmes contract is up, he will move to a different station. For me that is great. I sometimes like Ed Schultz, so I can switch between Randi and Ed

ignorant sobs? God help us all.

he's still a creep.

the ignorant sobs are those that follow o'rielly, hannity, and limbaugh. They do far more damage

I'm about ready to cancel now. I had tried to switch to monthly to wait and see what they were going to do in response. I called and told them to switch to monthly plan before my yearly rebilling kicked in. Evidently they f'd that up as Friday I just got my CC billing statement and they billed me for a yearly renewal. I'm going to ask for a full refund and cancellation now. They just haven't been doing ANYTHING right lately. I can actually podcast Stephanie Miller's show in the mornings before I go to work and get it sooner than when they repeat it. I'll similarly subscribe to White Rose to get Thom Hartmann's show and podcast him. Now they might rearrange their schedule to get Stephanie Miller and Hartmann live, but they should have been able to have done that earlier, if that was all they were planning to do.

Though they were late in responding to XM initially getting AAR on, they eventually got the right strategy in place then by adding it as a second channel. This time around though I think they've permanently lost the progressive listening crowd that had been subscribing since the days they first started Radio Left, and XM had significant Clear Channel ownership then. I'm out as far as Sirius is concerned now!

I'm not subscribing to XM until they get Malloy's full live slot in place. If I do, I'm trying to decide on whether to get a good portable unit that I can take into the office with me that is XM-enabled, or to get an Alpine unit that will allow me to more easily switch between XM and Sirius (since they've become less "common carriers" and more about jockeying each other with "exclusive content"). Does anyone know if there will be something like what Alpine offers for a portable unit? That would be my choice if I were to get new hardware soon.

Another thing to note about Sirius, for those still inclined to stay with them for their music offerings. They are now censoring all of their music streams to all be "clean versions" to meet some contract demands with their mobile carrier. Yet another reason to want to use one's own Ipod or other MP3 player instead.

I waited about an hour on the phone before I got someone

so I hope you have a speaker phone

I gave the CS rep (who was actually nice) an earful of what I found wrong with their service. She said she would pass up the info. Hope it does. I think she was hearing me that the folks that are programming their content aren't really hearing all of these concerns when they're making their decisions. She told me to perhaps hold off to see about the changes coming up in September, but I told her that those changes, from what we've heard really don't help the progressive listener much, and won't really matter to us.

on an expired Credit card.. I thought they would have called or gotten in touch with me some way, since my card expired since I got the service.

would help us in one of two ways:

1) Get them access to KGO talk radio hosts like Bernie Ward and/or Ray Taliafierro for a new channel

or

2) Get "exclusive" control over Sean Hannity and a few other hosts on ABC radio that XM would not want to lose access to. Then they might do a "deal" with XM to release their exclusive ownership of AAR in exchange to get access to ABC hosts. That would have been choice too.

Whether they were trying to do either of these still isn't clear at all. It was only a guess on my part on why they might have been trying to buy off this property. Then again, it might have been just to get exclusive access to kid's Disney programming too. In any case, this doesn't seem to be moving at all, so I'm guessing they were too clueless to ever think of this as a strategy.

Kind of sad. After I cancel, I'll also be taking off my Sirius dog window sticker too to complete the "divorce".

for right now I am with XM, and am quite happy

most of the talk left people are just the kind of content-less, ranting, cryy babies that makes us look like loonies. that's what i get for buying blue. stuck with an expensive, worthless radio.

For the same reason...

I love Sirius Music, but they dropped AAR because they did not want to have to pay for it.

and now it is time to move, now that XM has all of Randi...

Unfortunately, they aren't adding another left-leaning talk channel.

http://www.sirius.com/servlet/ContentServer?pagename=Sirius/Page&c=FlexContent&cid=1125002336674