OVERALL, Are You Satisfied w/Changes?

[CafeSSJ]

Fairly Simple Question : Overall, are you happy with the new channel changes?

For me, I would have to say yes. Deep Tracks and the Loft were saved. Margaritaville and Underound Garage were added. E Street, too. 60's sounds good, which makes me happy. (But a stupid Wolfman Jack show at midday?? WTF??? Terrible) Spectrum seems good, but repetitive (already!). At least there are alot of channels to tune to.

Soul Street was gutted and fried.

So for me, the good out weighs the really bad.

[Brian202]

Where's the "I don't give a damn" option?

[Thomps2525]

I'm on the fence...and I don't even know what that means. Some of the Sirius channels, especially Prime Country and Soul Town, focus on the same ol' boring top-ten hits (within their format). On the other hand, Deep Tracks, The Loft, Escape, Watercolors, and the Decades channels remain. When XM started, some of the playlists were small and improved with time, so maybe the Sirius channel playlists will also eventually deepen.

Brian, I Don't Give A Damn was the shortstop in Abbott & Costello's "Who's On First" routine. I'm glad I could clarify that for you.

[SatListener101]

I voted for On The Fence.

It's only been a day.

Good:
1) They kept most of the decades channels intact and added a few good names (70's is only bad exception).
2) They added Underground Garage!
3) They left Deep Tracks alone! (or so far it seems)

Bad:
1) FRED is DEAD! 1st Wave sucks!!
2) No more X-country and Beyond Jazz
3) Audiovisions replaced by inferior Spa
4) CHILL is DEAD. Sirius is CLUELESS on how to program this channel.

I will wait a few more weeks to see if it settles, or if there are anymore changes that make me cancel.

[floppyddog]

I voted so far, so good. I like what I've heard so far, but it hasn't even been 24 hours yet with the new lineup.

[boneyardfanxm]

The djs from Sirius that Ive heard so far are tools. Cafe you gotta hear this Jose guy on Liquid Metal in the afternoon. He has the fake AM dj voice from the 70s. I thought it was a joke for a long time. When I realized it wasnt I was actually embarrassed for the hack. I do like Underground Garage but I dont have a feel for trhe jocks over there yet.

[SatListener101]

[Thomps2525]

I bet Brian doesn't even subscribe to Sirius XM! He just likes to make lots of posts on every message board he can find....except for The Hottie Thread, of course.

[Brian202]

[greg_m]

Let me begin by saying I have only ever listened to a few channels (for more than an hour or so, to check out the others).

[[HOPEFUL]] Symphony Hall is not XM Classics, but it might actually be better. They now have four hosts, instead of two. The voice tracks are topical and make timely reference to the date and time, so perhaps they will be fresh every day, whereas on XM Classics, each 7- or 8-hour block got as many as a dozen repetitions (song for song, word for word) over a few months. It's too early to say for sure, but I don't like the music any less than I did on XM Classics. It may be better; time will tell.

[[TERRIBLE]] They killed VOX (XM 112), which was 24/7 vocal music... many excellent opera companies, lots of good choral music, etc. Unlike anything I've ever heard before, anywhere. It seems to be replaced with 24/7 [New York] Metropolitan Opera. Talk about a sellout! With dozens of fine opera companies in the world, we get to hear only one? And no choral music? This is criminal! At least the host, Robert Aubrey Davis, has been moved to Symphony Hall, so his knowledge and talents aren't lost. But what a crime that VOX is gone.

[[SAD]] Fine Tuning is gone. Beyond Jazz is gone. Nothing to replace them. Sirius cut back its own jazz channels several months ago. Apparently they're rather run more mainstsream FM-type formats and -- God help us! -- single "artist" channels. Gimme a break... who listens to those for more than half an hour? If you like the Dead that much, you already own all the albums, you don't need a Sirius Dead channel!

[[UNKNOWN]] I haven't had time to check out Watercolors... hopefully it's gotten better (less vocals and "urban" sounding cuts) and not worse (more of same).

[[UNKNOWN]] I haven't had time to check out SPA to see how it compares to AudioVisions. Hopefully they got rid of all the hokey poetry and "readings" and bogus liners ("You've got -- pause -- Audio -- pause -- Visions") and recordings of rainstorms. If they just have music, and it's consistent, it could be even better than it was.

Total:

Unknown: 2
Sad: 1
Terrible: 1
Maybe hopeful: 1

P.S.: I quit listening to things like OTR and Sonic Theatre long ago. I loved the programming, but couldn't stand the terrible audio artifacts. My vote would be to take back the bandwidth from sports, and use it on something interesting. But that's just me.

[KB2SMS]

I may be ditching XM. I'll give it until Xmas and then make my move.
This sucks, I HATE mergers with a passion.......

[Thomps2525]

Today the stockholders approved the $52 billion sale of Anheuser-Busch to InBev, a Belgian company. How does that one grab ya? (Oops, I'm sorry. I just realized that I've made the first XMFan post today that doesn't contain a complaint about XM's programming. Forgive me.)

[Built To Post]

I went with They Killed XM.

That's probably a little too harsh of wording for how I totally feel since O&A and R&F are still part of the service, but I'm disappointed in some of the other moves for my personal musical tastes and likes.

I really dislike these moves recently without giving me anything in return that I personally like:

1. Getting rid of Billy Zero on XMU. He had passion and turned me on to a lot of great music.

2. No punk exclusive channel. Faction is a joke if they try to sell that to punk/ska fans as an alternative.

3. No old school rap exclusive channel. I'm not so much into newer hip-hop so it was great to put The Rhyme on and hear stuff that I dug that brought up great memories.

[bgfred]

Voted in the poll... A wise man once told me that when you ask for something, there are really only two answers:
1) no.
2) hell, no.

My answer is hell, no. Fred's demise is pretty much a deal breaker (First Wave brings new meaning to suck) and after much seeking today there just no other channel that brings along much to get excited about, musically. The celebrity/artist driven approach of Sirius - vs. XM's "as deep as it goes" exploration of each genre - may really do it for some, perhaps many, but it just ain't my bag.

It has done one thing for me though, I got into Pandora today. I didn't mean for that to sound dirty.

Not cancelling entirely (yet) but will be dumping at least one and maybe two radios from the 3 I have now.

[floppyddog]

You can always go back to the soothing sounds of 5+ minute commercial blocks on FM while sitting in traffic. Or, give this new stuff a chance! It hasn't even been a day yet! I've been listening to a bunch of channels and so far haven't noticed a difference so far. Even with being a dual subscriber, I'm checking out some stuff I haven't listened to before, like The Spectrum. I'm actually enjoying the channel so far.