XM Radio fails in one genre…
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.
October 4th, 2004 at 6:14 am
I remember listening to some Jack Benny episodes on XM a while back, and they cut out Dennis Day’s song in a couple of them. I’m beginning to wonder if they cut it in order to squeeze in some commercials, rather than them only having the show in songless form. Having been the recipient of multiple spams for MediaBay’s Audio Book Club (from multiple well-known spammers), nothing they do would surprise me anymore. And, yes, I’ve complained repeatedly to MediaBay about the spam, but since I didn’t do it through the link in the spam, they keep coming.
I plan on writing a series on how to deal with spam (Spam Reporting for Dummies?), but in this case complaining to MediaBay won’t do you much good. What you need to do is complain to the upstreams of both the sender and MediaBay. Enough complaints, the upstream will cut off their Internet connection…trust me, that will get their attention a whole lot faster than one complaint.
Give me a couple of days to start the series on how to deal with spam…it’s a complex topic, but once one understands how email works, it becomes really easy to figure out to whom you need to complain. –cfs3
October 20th, 2004 at 11:12 am
If you move over one channel, to XM’s 163 you can hear them wear out modern audio drama IN MONO. They consider all of this to be “talk” and talk does not need stereo. Not a problem for OTR, but a waste of sonic space not to hear the new stuff in stereo.
November 15th, 2004 at 2:51 pm
Here in El Lay, back when KNX had their old radio series, I had commented to the OTR list that Dennis Day’s song had always been cut out, and someone responede that a possible reason was that the source was probably Armed Forces Radio, where commercials and other miscellanea were often deleted. I found out since that KNX got their programming from Radio Classics, who I see being sliced and diced hrere by many others. Looks like it’s really too bad that XM and Sirius have selected that single vendor for all all their OTR programming.
June 11th, 2005 at 12:01 am
Not to be contrary, but I happen to like the fact that theres ANY OTR on Satellite..While there could be improvements in scheduling and presentation, I think It’s good to have the option to hear basically full, mostly complete shows Where lately at least in my area there is almost no OTR on regular radio
June 11th, 2005 at 10:21 am
Tom Kirby commented: I remember listening to some Jack Benny episodes on XM a while back, and they cut out Dennis Day’s song in a couple of them. I’m beginning to wonder if they cut it in order to squeeze in some commercials, rather than them only having the show in songless form.
Actually it’s probably because if you broadcast a song, performance fees have to be paid to the publisher and songwriter. These fees are based on the type of media and requires a seperate license. It is probably too costly for Media Bay to hire a song clearance company (and there are many)to research and get the proper clearances to use the song.