For those of you unfortunate enough to subscribe to satellite radio, you know that Sirius bought out XM (if you believe the press releases that say it was a merger, you are way too naive…). And shortly (middle of next month), the Sirius New York programmers begin programming most of the music channels. But right now, you can get a glimpse into the future of satellite radio programming by listening to the Halloween mini-channel, XM Gore, which is nothing but a rebroadcast of Sirius Scream.

Boy, does it suck.

No, I’m not saying that because it’s from Sirius, I’m saying it because it’s true. And I’m not even whining about the lousy sound quality of all the channels now that they’ve dropped everything down to 32kbps so they can shove in the “best” of Sirius (and then sent spam email to those of us refusing marketing email, no less!)…I’m specifically complaining about the uselessness of the Halloween channel. Some specific examples of why it sucks:

• Pitiful PAD data: See, because of technical limitations of the Sirius system, they have to use the song artist field for “Happy Halloween!” (Sirius can’t change a channel name without resetting everyone’s radio, and they’re using a “Specialty” channel for Sirius Scream, so they have to tell listeners it’s a Halloween channel somewhere), they are too lazy or too incompetent to run a separate set of PAD data, and since they can’t give a song artist name they just gave up and send out things like “BOO!!!” instead of actual track information even in the artist song field. So the PAD data is completely useless (and generally ALL CAPS, TOO - does Sirius not have a lower-case font on their radios?).
   

• Interstitials between every track: Gees, the Sirius programmers apparently believe their listeners are morons who can’t remember from track to track what they are listening to…they are literally running a Scream/Gore bumper between every track! This passes bad programming, and is flat-out embarrassing. (That’s not even a complaint about the FYI commercials, which are frequent…but they need a channel ID even after a commercial!!!)
   

• It’s broadcasting in mono. Seriously. Although, considering the programming, it probably doesn’t matter. Read on.
   

• Repetitious: Ok, I’m certain it’s a coincidence, but I was listening yesterday afternoon, and heard exactly the same tracks in the same order as I’m hearing them tonight. Seriously. They don’t even seem to have a computer to randomize the tracks.
   

• The programming flat-out sucks: No seriously…it’s people I’ve never heard of (apparently Sirius jocks) telling stupid stories. Er…dudes, it’s Halloween. You know, scary music, not goofy stories.

For those who don’t believe me about the whole “Scream/Gore Programming Sucks” thing, let me show you a track list from last year’s XM Halloween channel, Igor; this tracklist was taken directly from my Inno last year. Please scroll down below the Wolfman Jack section (the reason I had the Inno record it) to see a representative sample of what XM programmed. Contrast and compare with this mess, a tracklist of about an hour of XM Gore. Of course, you can’t see what the hell is what in most cases, thanks to the complete lack of usable PAD data, so about the only thing this proves is the incompetence of the Sirus system, and that it’s going to migrate to XM receivers not because it must, but because Sirius programmers and executives are going to aim for the lowest-common denominator, whether in system operation or programming.

(*sigh*) What depresses me is that this is the future…the Christmas channel (or channels…maybe) will apparently be as badly operated, and lord only knows what the New York programmers will do to the other music channels (we’ll find out mid-November).

This is why the FCC should have forced the merged company to immediately sell off one of their licenses…maybe another company, unencumbered by the massive debt the company raked up by paying a half-billion to one over-aged frat boy, might have returned Satellite Radio to the XM beginnings, where the music quality was important and programming was king. But instead, it’s clear that the dream of Satellite Radio is completely dead, and just waiting to fall over.