Yeah, today is the day XM Radio goes up three bucks. And to tell you the truth, I don’t mind that it’s going up three bucks, because I love the service (especially XMPR, the BBC World Service for the finest in news reportage, C-SPAN Radio for the same hands-off coverage of the Washington, DC scene as you get on C-SPAN television, and my daughter can’t live without Absolutely Mindy after school on XM Kids) - but I am a little miffed about their stated reasons.

According to their letter to current subscribers, they, “recently announced an agreement with Major League Baseball® to provide play-by-play coverage for every team, all season long, beginning this spring.” I’m certain that cost them a pretty penny, but it doesn’t mean anything whatsoever to me. If I listen to a half-hour of play-by-play baseball this season, it’ll be a miracle…I haven’t listened to nor watched baseball since Earl Weaver coached the Baltimore Orioles team including Boog Powell, the two Robinsons, and Davy Johnson. They also talk about their other sports offerings…again, ho-hum. I know many people out there care about sports, but I’ve never understood the fascination.

But here’s the piece that tells most of the story; “Beginning April 2, 2005, we will expand the basic service package to include two premium services at no additional charge — the High Voltage channel (previously $1.99/month) and XM Radio Online (previously $3.99/month).”

Pay attention here…they’re basically telling us that the “shock-jock” team of Opie and Anthony (which are the High Voltage channel) can’t gather enough subscribers to pay the freight. And I can understand why…during one of the weeks when XM previewed High Voltage to all subscribers, I listened to about fifteen minutes, and won’t be listening again. These guys may be loud, but they aren’t clever, nor funny; at least not if you’re over fifteen and stopped tittering at dirty words. These guys make throwing up at a frat party look like a good time…it’s completely understandable that relatively few people want to pay extra to hear their nonsense.

And XM Radio Online, I have to admit, never did make any sense to me. One of the main selling points for XM Satellite Radio is the amazing quality of the music…so tell me again why I’d want to stream it through the Windoze Media Mangler again? I mean, yeah, I’ll probably sign up for it (screw it, it’s now part of the package I’m paying for), and might even use it a time or two to hear an edition of The Bob Edwards Show I missed in the morning run, but I cannot imagine spending much time listening to a tinny Internet version of 70’s on 7. They have none of the talk-radio channels I listen to (with the sole exception of The Bob Edwards Show looping to replace all the other wonderful shows on XMPR), so how much of a “bonus” is this really going to be for me? Truth is, my guess is this “service” didn’t go over as well as they had anticipated, either, and they have to make their nut by getting the rest of us to pay for the formerly “premium” service knowing few of us will actually use it.

Yes, XM Satellite Radio is worth the $13/month. And yes, I’m still a loyal subscriber of the service even though the price has gone up those three bucks. But I’m not even a little happy about the obvious reasons for the increase. Personally, I’d have prefered they simply dump the O&A channel if it wasn’t paying for itself, drop the Internet service if they couldn’t make it viable, and charge a three buck premium for all those baseball games I won’t be listening to. But the other two premium services must have made it pretty clear to them that baseball would never break its nut without the rest of us shelling out for it, too…