CAUTION: I’ve only been using Sirius/XM online for 3 days. Don’t make any purchase decision based on my experience. When I did a “dry run” of subscribing to XM Online, it directed me to sign up for Sirius online, which has a much smaller list of channels. Even then, when I tried the link to sign up for Sirius Online, the server was down. If they give you a free trial on a service you can’t buy, that’s a problem.
Sirius/XM offers a subscription based service to stream their programming, even if you don’t have a Sirius/XM radio. Both Sirius Online and XM Online services offer a 7 day free online trial, so I’m poking around in it and writing down my observations.
First thing that I’ve learned is some of the XM channels are not available for streaming – specifically channel 158 that carries Quinn and Rose and 165 that carries Glenn Beck. Clear Channel is part owner of XM, and doesn’t allow XM to stream their channels onto the internet.
I may start adding in programming schedules for the XM channels. If you have read my blogs for the past few months, you should have a pretty good idea why. If you are mostly interested in News/Talk, XM is your choice. XM is carrying all of the important Sirius talk channels, but Sirius only carries the XM channels on the internet, and only a few of them. Several of the Sirius radio news/talk channels also available on XM are not included in the internet streaming package.
So what can you hear on Sirius/XM if you threw your regular radios away?
- Mark Levin
- Sean Hannity
- CNN / CNN Headline
- Fox News Radio
- Bloomberg
- Dr Laura
- Dave Ramsey
- Rusty Humphries
- Laura Ingraham
- Thom Hartmann
- Bill Press
- Lynn Samuels (formerly on WABC)
- Andew Wilkow (formerly on WABC)
- Howard Stern
- Opie & Anthony
- BBC
- C-SPAN audio
- Fox TV audio
- Bill Bennett
- Ed Schultz
- Radio One (Joe Madison, Al Sharpton)
- ESPN, ESPN Desportes
What can’t you hear on Sirius / XM?
- Rush Limbaugh (Internet, Subscription)
- Glenn Beck (Ch 165 Radio only, Internet, Subscription)
- Michael Savage (Internet, Subscription)
- Randi Rhodes
- Quinn & Rose (Ch 158 Radio only, no internet)
- Jason Lewis
- Your local mornng sports/weather/traffic wakeup show
- Salem (Gallagher, Medved, Hewitt, Prager)
- Coast to Coast AM
- Dennis Miller
- Neal Boortz
- Bob & Tom
- Jerry Doyle
- Mancow
- Steve Harvey
- Jim Rome
So most all of those things you can’t get are Clear Channel / Premiere programs.
In the early days of Sirius/XM, there was serious retribution against hosts that made their show available on satellite, with terrestrial stations dropping their program and overtly saying that was the reason (Glenn Haege comes to mind as an example). That makes the NAB claim that a Siruis/XM merger would reduce choices for the listener sound pretty hollow. It was never about what the listener wanted.
A really obvious possibility now that I’m a little familiar with Sirius/XM is that XM would acquire Premiere from Clear Channel, either voluntarily or if the company is broken up… or at least rights to carry Premiere’s programming. Howard Stern’s contract runs out in 2010 which could free up $50 milion/year. Just from my little poll, it’s pretty clear Rush Limbaugh could easily fill that void and bring in a flood of new subscribers, albeit an entirely different demographic – old rich white men instead of young unemployed punks. Wouldn’t be a hard decision for me.
It looks like XM has issues with incorrect schedule information on programming on the Sirius channels they are carrying. Sirius/XM integration still has a ways to go
At 11 pm (Eastern), XM Online brought down all of its streams for “server maintenance”
XM tracks that you’re logged in by pushing a browser cookie, and the cookie times out very quickly, forcing you to relogin. The details of the Sirius Online service suggest is even more aggressive about pushing you offline “to protect the experience for others”. That has nothing to do with it – advertisers won’t pay for ads when the listener may not actually be at the computer.
You’ll never see anything from Clear Channel stream on Sirius XM online as long as they maintain the current relationship. Clear Channel controls all the commercial spots on the channels they operate on XM, as per their arrangement dating back a decade when they invested in XM Radio and bought 10% of the bandwidth. Now, for Sirius XM to give them any more than the bare minimum requirements to them is just throwing resources and money out the window. Clear Channel’s channels aren’t even acknowledged or promoted by Sirius XM.
Dr. Laura (Premiere) is on Sirius/XM…
Yes she is, but Premiere is her distributor, not her producer. Dr. Laura’s show is self-produced by Take on the Day, LLC, so this exempts her from the Clear Channel-XM agreement. The same is true for Premiere distributed Dan Patrick (Content Factory), Tony Bruno (Content Factory), Real Estate Today (Media Syndication Services), and Sean Hannity (Sean Hannity Show).
On the opposite end, shows produced by Clear Channel that are distributed by outside parties DO fall into the agreement. So Todd Schnitt, produced by CC in Tampa but distributed by Dial Global, and now Compass Media Networks, is denied carriage on Sirius. Jerry Springer’s radio show was another case. Distributed by Air America, but CC produced it.