Satellite Radio
One More Time
by Sawyer Brown, Technology Editor

I have in the interim on numerous occasions attempted to share my enthusiasm with friends. My pitch is the same as in the piece I wrote.

I start by saying, "There are two big if’s.

One: IF you spend a lot of time in your car, and
Two: IF music is important to you, then you should get satellite radio."

I then go on to describe the wonders of XM: the array of music, the many channels that are free of commercials, the discovery of new music and new performers (who are identified in the radio's LED screen), the delight of constant access to the BBC World Service, the Stand-up Comedy channel, the Truckers’ Channel, etc., etc.

Painfully I have had to observed a uniform reaction on the part of my alleged friends: boredom. They listen politely (Oh, it’s just Sawyer going on and on about another of his over-the-top enthusiasms). They yawn discretely, and wait for me to finish so we can talk about important things like AOL 8.0, a World Series without the Yankees, and Christopher Hitchens’ departure from The Nation.

While I may not be a conversationalist of the Oscar-Wilde rank, I’m a fairly entertaining talker and am not used to producing such overt, consistent signs of boredom in listeners.

Because it happened again and again, I had to think: Is it me? Is it my pitch? Then I’d get back in the car, listening to XM Radio, swept away once again by the lovely aural wonders of satellite manna from the heavens, and I’d think: No, it’s not me. It’s THEM, my alleged friends.

The more I thought about the situation, the more I didn’t want to discard so many (ALL!) my friends just because they didn’t get it.

Finally I realized the problem isn’t me, it isn’t them. The problem is radio. Or, more accurately, "radio."

The Problem with "Radio"
The word "radio," I came to understand, is severely, perhaps fatally, contaminated.

Say "radio" and we all know, from years of conditioning, what "radio" is. No need to go into the gruesome details here because we all KNOW. We also all know that "radio" has been getting worse and worse: either homogenous barf-music confined to a few genres, or homogenous barf-blather confined to one religio-political persuasion, or endless hours of jock-talk about athletes making $10 million a year.

Oh sure, you can tune to the far left end of the FM band and find an occasional bit of worthwhile music, news, and talk, but even that’s getting harder and harder to locate as the so-called "public" stations sell out to what they refer to as "enhanced supporters" (read: "sponsors").

"Radio" in short is a big audio mess whose only real value at this point is in traffic and weather reports.

When I would start off on my high-intensity praise of satellite radio, what was basically happening was that ears closed immediately as soon as I got to the dreaded R-word.

With that realization, I understood that satellite radio is so different from what we know as "radio" that IT IS NOT RADIO. To call satellite radio "radio" is to contaminate it and completely fail to describe what satellite radio is.

1. Satellite radio is radio the way it might, in a less laissez-faire, greed-driven society, have been.

2. Satellite radio is a completely different LISTENING EXPERIENCE, unlike anything we know as "radio."

It’s like sex. You can listen to somebody talk about it, you can read about it, but until you experience it, you just don’t—and can’t—get it.

I’m not saying satellite radio is as good as sex (though sometimes it comes close), but you see my point.

Given that, I repeat the two criteria of my opening pitch:
   1. If you spend a lot of time in your car, and
   2. If music is important to you,
then you should get satellite radio—or should I say, you should get the satellite listening experience?

END

Note:
Magellan’s Log is hardly a full-service consumer publication. The opinions above are based solely on exposure to XM Satellite Radio. There are actually two services, the other being Sirius Satellite Radio. Here are the sites for both:

www.xmradio.com
www.siriusradio.com