I cancelled my Inno’s XM subscription this morning.

I cannot tell you how much that hurt, but it’s way past time. The service has collapsed in on itself over the past year or so, to the point where the only thing I listen to any more on XM is The Bob Edwards Show, and even that is barely listenable anymore - no, no, it isn’t the quality of the programming the show provides, it’s the lousy quality of the sound being broadcast. It’s clear XM dramatically cut the bandwidth on channel 133, especially whenever anyone on the show speaks a word with the letter “S” in it. Even so, they raise my rates for three radios by $13.00/month, while sending friends of mine offers as low as $4.99/month for primary radios! It’s pretty clear the only “loyalty” they have to long-time subscribers is to picking their pockets to try and dig themselves out of the massive debt that required selling 2/5th of the company to DirectTV.

It is especially painful since for years before XMPR, I was arguing that for-profit public-radio-style programming was a viable alternative to the screaming talk-jocks currently polluting the airwaves of commercial radio. I wanted XMPR to succeed, to play public radio programs and still make a profit on selling commercial time during those programs. But a succession of program directors without any experience in the public radio arena, coupled with a “bastard-child” mentality at XM and now SiriusXM, meant there was no chance of that ever happening. Couple the abysmal sound quality, and I’ve pretty much checked-out completely from XMPR, excepting the aforementioned Edwards show.

I still have two radios I’m paying for, but this too will be changing as quickly as possible. Any music listening I do is through Slacker or Pandora, which both have much better sound quality than the 32kbps XM stream (which, effective Wednesday, costs an additional $3.00/month, although they’ll add a 128kbps stream for that cash). And I’d wager a bunch that next year, when contract time rolls around, the Edwards show will be canceled. Assuming the company actually makes it that long, of course…

But still, it kinda breaks my heart to pack away that Inno. It was, in the beginning at least, one helluva radio.