I’m actually a little surprised, but there seem to be a whole bunch of people annoyed at the loss of the 7:00 AM EST prior-show replay of The Bob Edwards Show on SiriusXM. Even though one-third of the weekday airtime is now programmed with that one hour, replacing it with the insipid The Takeaway has riled some folks who are used to listening to the show during the 7A timeslot. The purpose of this long post is to help you reclaim that listening time (as well as giving general suggestions for time-shifting satellite and Internet radio).

But first, an observation that I should note is not inspired by any inside information - the folks at the show have been very helpful to this blog and the forum in the past, but in this case I have not discussed any of this with them, so these are my thoughts alone. Anyway, complaining to the show through their website will not help you. So far as I know, the show’s staff has nothing to do with the programming of Channel 133, XMPR, and is a content provider, nothing more - I won’t argue they shouldn’t, since the show’s staff actually has experience in public radio, unlike every one of the Program Directors to date, but they don’t. That’s important to remember; complaining to the show about the timeslot change is a little like complaining to Ira Glass that your local public radio station changed the time of This American Life. If you want your complaint to get to the person who actually made the change, go to the XMPR EmailUs page and make your feelings known there. The Program Director of XMPR (and lord knows how many other channels with the recent staff cutbacks) should receive it if you send it through there…while I’m certain the show is sending copies of your comments along, it’ll mean a whole lot more if you express your comments directly.

Another observation; the schedule change makes sense, even while being a pain for many people. If the channel is going to run The Takeaway (something I wouldn’t do if I were programming it, obviously), it makes sense to run it kinda live, and the 8:00 AM EST hour is pretty much sacrosanct as the “live” hour for The Bob Edwards Show, so there aren’t a whole lot of other options. While it might not be a great move from your perspective, there is, at least, a reason for the change.

Anyway, on to some solutions to allow you to listen to The Bob Edwards Show at 7:00 AM EST the way you used to; if you have any questions about any of this, please let me know in the comments and I’ll elucidate. Note that since most of these suggestions, while perfectly legal “Fair Use” so far as copyright goes, are a violation of contract law as per your SiriusXM Terms of Service, we’re talking theoretical here…I would never dream of suggesting you violate the terms dictated demanded suggested by our RIAA overlords. And most assume you have access to an MP3 audio player; other than Apple’s players, they’re available inexpensively nowadays (check The OldRadio.Network Shop if you want to buy one and support this website at the same time) and can connect to most car systems; if you have an external XM radio, you can just as easily connect an MP3 player.

1. Buy an Inno/XMp3. Since I have considerably soured on satellite radio in general (and in specific, since there’s now only one option anyway), I can’t in good conscience suggest you shell out money for a portable (or any other radio) at this point; and while the XMp3 can record five channels at once, it is severely limited in what you can do with the recordings; owners of the Inno/Helix/Nexus will be shocked to discover the XMp3 cannot run a playlist mixed between MP3s and recorded XM content, nor can XMp3 owners delete interstitials within a programming block. Besides, if you buy a new radio, you’ll need to buy a boatload of accessories (extra cradles, etc.) and with the way Sirius ran things before the merger, I’m not certain now is a great time to make any serious (pun intended) investment in satrad equipment.

   If you already have a radio capable of recording, by all means, use it. With eight airings every day, there’s bound to be one when you’re not listening (think 4:00 AM EST) - you can record the show and play it back during your 7:00 AM commute. Otherwise, I’d try something less expensive and more likely to be of use should the current management of SiriusXM continue on their current course and bankrupt the company.

2. Use your computer to record the show from satellite radio. (Disclaimer: theoretical, remember?) By plugging the home dock into your computer (hit your local electronics or department store for a simple stereo 1/8″ cable), you can record the audio into your computer, and even convert it to MP3 for playback in any MP3 player during your commute. There is freely-available software (Audacity is one of the best) that will allow you to record from the line-in of your computer’s audio card, and will even convert to MP3 using the also-free (but a possible violation of patent rights when downloaded by those in the United States and other countries) LAME encoder. Audacity is one of those “open source” programs I love so much; programming code that lots of eyes look at every day, so problems are fixed quickly.

   That said, I’m personally a fan of the commercial TotalRecorder, an inexpensive software package which also uses the LAME engine to convert recordings to MP3s…TotalRecorder has a built-in scheduler, which can make life a whole lot easier for the non-programmer, handles the conversions automatically, and is simple to use and understand. (I use TotalRecorder every day of the week for something or another. Theoretically, anyway.)

3. Use your computer to record the show from XM radio’s on-line stream. (Disclaimer: theoretical, remember?) XM Radio Online’s Channel 133 plays The Bob Edwards Show 24/7; weekdays from 8:00 AM to 7:00 AM EST, then weekends rotating the five shows all weekend long - and remember, if you pay for the “XM Everything” package or higher, an XMRO account is included, costing you nothing extra! (If you have an XM account, sign up for your free XMRO account, and maybe even use it at work to listen to the show.) The sound quality is only slightly lower than over-the-air (actually, the stream has a better bitrate, but worse compression and less audio processing so it sounds a little worse), and your computer can record-and-convert the show pretty much any time during the day or night for playback the next morning’s commute.

   I honestly wouldn’t use Audacity for this unless you’re sitting in front of the computer at the top of the hour to manually start the recording, since it can’t automatically handle the setup/scheduling/recording/converting. TotalRecorder can do this, but you need some technical savvy and it’s easier with the more-expensive Pro version than with the Standard version.

   A better commercial choice here would be Applian Technology’s Replay A/V - this allows you to store your XMRO username/password directly in the application, and so long as the application is running (HINT: set it to auto-start when you fire up your computer) will automatically make a connection to XMRO 133 and record the show at whatever time you set in the schedule. It will also auto-convert the show to MP3 or whatever format you need, and even automagically use YouSendIt to email shows recorded during the day from your home computer to your work computer for the commute home! It also handles Sirius OnLine, although I have no experience there, as well as podcasts, other on-line radio stations, and other audio and video recording needs. This one is drop-dead simple for the non-computer geek; while I use the command-line StreamRipper on a linux box for time-shifting various on-line radio stations, Replay A/V allows non-programmers to do the same thing easily and painlessly on their Windows machines. (It’ll even automatically burn an Audio CD of the show after recording, although they haven’t yet figured out how to snail-mail the disc after burning.)

4. Use Audible. Ugh. This is the least-recommended, since you’ll need to pay again for the show. I know I should be promoting this option, but I simply cannot - the sound quality of Audible’s programming is “teh suck” - the “CD-Quality” sound files provided by Audible are less than AM quality…and don’t even get me started on the low-quality versions which are absolutely unintelligible. And ignoring that, Audible files are loaded with DRM (Digital Rights Management) software, locking your ability to use the files to whatever computer and devices are “authorized” to use them. Yes, you can kill the DRM relatively easily if you know how, but any DRM file should be avoided like the plague. (One of these days I’m going to devote a large posting to why Audible…isn’t, complete with examples.)

   Audible should only be considered by those angry enough about the schedule change to cancel their satrad subscription; in that case, Audible is the only option to listen to the weekday show.

So there are options for time-shifting The Bob Edwards Show back to its 7:00 AM EST hour for your daily commute…they all require a little more effort than turning on your XM radio, but desperate times call for desperate measures, eh?