I love my XM Radio; the news and current affairs programming is about the most complete you’ll find in one place (with The Bob Edwards Show premiering next Monday morning!), and the depth and breadth of music is really amazing…lord, I swear somewhere on there you could hear Thai music running. But when it comes to Old-Time Radio, it falls apart.

Of course, we can blame this on the XM people not knowing anything about OTR, so they contracted with MediaBay, another company that doesn’t seem to know a whole lot about OTR. I’ve complained before about When Radio Was (and stay tuned for another comment on the subject), but the RadioClassics division of RadioSpirits/MediaBay, which programs the OTR channels for both XM and Sirius, finds an even deeper low than its commercial-station sibling.

Since I’ve whined about RadioClassics before, too, I sat down and listened to two hours straight of XM’s RadioClassics programming. I was determined to find something good to say about the programming.

(*sigh*) Oh, well.

I mean, what’s good to talk about? The commercials are worse than anything you’d hear on AM radio, mostly promoting RadioSpirits closeouts…er…I mean…special deals, but also promoting anything else they think they can sell, like financial weeklies and golf magazines. Of course, like When Radio Was, they run their shows on the half-hour, so any original commercials and some programming as well, needs to be hacked out to make room for these commercials. There’s a “host” with a voice for newspaper who clearly doesn’t know jack about OTR occasionally interrupting the commercials with the sparset information possible about the shows (I was tempted to check the show dates he gave, assuming from his unprofessional anouncing skills that they’d likely be wrong, but I didn’t waste the time). Granted, ever since MediaBay moved RadioSpirits from Chicago to New Jersey they haven’t had anyone on-staff who knows anything at all about OTR (check their financials…they don’t know much about selling any kinds of spoken recordings, either), but this is just embarasing.

The sound quality is surprisingly poor, considering how RadioSpirits keeps claming how great a job they do cleaning the sound (First Generation Radio Archives does a much better job, and frankly I routinely receive shows from high-end collectors who deliver substancially better sound than anything I’ve heard from First Generation - heck, I have MP3s that sound better than some of RadioSpirits’ “restorations”).

Understand, I am not the target market for RadioClassics…that channel is targeted to people who don’t know any better. But a serious collector wouldn’t give this channel more than five-minutes worth of listening…and all collectors of OTR should at least aspire to be a serious collector.

If you’re looking for good quality complete-as-aired programming with a knowledgable host airing interesting Old-Time Radio, I’d suggest Ed Walker’s The Big Broadcast every Sunday night (on-demand complete streaming shows are available for the week after broadcast in RealAudio format at http://www.wamu.org/). This guy forgot more about OTR than anyone currently on-staff at MediaBay ever knew.

But don’t look on XM’s or Sirius’ RadioClassics channels…this is strictly for those who don’t care about quality OTR.

Speaking of dumbing things down, MediaBay has removed their writer for When Radio Was, Anthony Tollin, and replaced him with…someone on-staff in New Jersey. As many of you already know, Mr. Tollin is one of the foremost radio historians, and the undisputed expert on all things Shadow. So for those few people who are still listening to When Radio Was, your last reason is gone - plan on hearing Stan Freberg sound like he’s suddenly received a lobotomy. Now not only will there be hacked-up programs, there will be hackneyed descriptions to go with ‘em.