Vakkotaur

My previous post was about the early pushing of bad Christmas/Winter music. A couple days ago I got in the car and found that XM's "40s on 4" had been replaced by "Holiday Traditions" until after Christmas. The 40s channel was not moved. This is irritating. This is the crap sort of thing that drove people AWAY from broadcast radio in the first place! And it's not as if there aren't other channels that could be used. It's after the baseball season, even I know that. And XM has a scad of baseball (MLB) channels that could have been used.

Right now I'm settling for the 50s channel and occasionally others, but I'm not bothering with 4 for a few weeks. Sure, if it had stayed 40s, I'd have expected some holiday music - but that's it, just some. They DID use dormant channels in previous years. Why did they decide to screw over the 40s channel this year? Is it that Sirius pulls that crap and this is merger fallout? Is it that this forces an audience for a moment, ala spammers? If I want that sort of abuse, I'll go to a damn mall.

Great going XM/Sirius, you make going to an mp3 player look all that much better: no subscription and no bogus channel-format change crap. Hey, I know it's now considered rather Old School, but I still have a tape deck and I'm not afraid to use it.

I hope XM manages to learn not to do that as they managed to learn a bit with the Radio Classics channel. For a few years they'd have a week (only a week!) of all Christmas themed radio shows. Until last year when they had a week with only some Christmas themed shows, and some regular shows - listeners had had enough.

Jay got me an XM Skyfi2 receiver for Christmas and also the mobile mounting kit. As it was Winter in Minnesota and the garage is not heated, I put off installing the mobile kit until Spring. This Spring I eventually got it all set up and it worked fairly well. It did everything it was supposed to, with one annoying glitch.

Every once in a while, it would forget its settings. I'd start the car and the XM set would not turn on. When I turned it on, it was like it had just been authorized but not yet programmed. I tried to diagnose just when this amnesia would occur, just in case it was something within my control, but no pattern emerged.

I'd had enough of this. I read the warranty and had Jay call about the problem as the warranty required the purchaser be the one to make a claim. Three phone calls later he had a ticket number and a return authorized. We packed up the Skyfi2 today and it'll be mailed off Monday. In a couple weeks the replacement should arrive and hopefully I can program it once and be done.

I've gotten very used to having XM in the car, so I know I'll miss it. But I still have the AM-FM broadcast reciever, the mp3 player, and the tape deck, so I'm not exactly hurting for audio options.