In an apparent attempt to get their Live365 radio station canceled, the hosts of Radio Once More, Ken Stockinger and Neal Ellis, have invited Your Obedient Servant and the Worst Voice in Internet Audio to guest on their program this Friday evening, January 22nd, at 9:00pm Eastern Standard Time, 6:00pm in the west (and in Baltimore it’ll be 9:42).

Please join us at that time, when we will attempt to answer the question, “What the heck is he doing here?” Check out http://www.radiooncemore.com/ for complete details and to listen in.

The blog takes a break from the pressing news of the Jay/Conan/NBC kerfuffle to proudly announce your humble webmaster is somewhat insufferable right now. There is a story to be told, though, before we get to the good stuff.

As my regular readers know, I am a big fan of The Bob Edwards Show. So much so that I created a fan-based site before the show had one of it’s own. The show recently had a very talented artist, Jill Sobule, on the show to talk about the clever way she self-financed her most recent CD.

Now understand, I really pay attention to the show, it’s staff, and it’s website. And I noticed they decided to run a contest where Ms. Sobule was providing five lucky people a theme song of their very own…so of course, I entered, since let’s be real, even an old guy like me needs a theme song. I mean, imagine…he enters the kitchen in the morning, theme song playing in the background, while he makes his morning cappuccino to thunderous applause…

After I entered, I kinda forgot about it. Until I got a note from one of the producers that I was one of the lucky winners! (I have a suspicion that, considering my usual luck, there were only five entries, but hey, I’ll take whatever good fortune I can get.) He asked me to write a paragraph about myself, which considering my natural modesty was almost impossible, but I struggled through and finally completed it. (It won’t surprise anyone who knows me that the paragraph was written considerably tongue-in-cheek, although at the same time every word of it was absolutely true - I don’t know if Jill or the producer believe all of it, but I can provide references to back up every strange event and interest.)

Thanks to a screw-up in my spam filters, this theme languished in a filter file until I rescued it this evening. My wife and daughter are trying to decide what to do with me now, since I now refuse to enter a room until my theme is played.

All (or at least most) kidding aside, please listen to the theme at the bottom of this post - and yeah, plan on hearing this, or at least pieces of this, frequently here on the blog. And after you do, head on over to Jill’s website and listen to some of her songs - she makes a rotating selection of her work freely available to enjoy. I think you’ll agree with me that she’s well worth the listen, and if you do purchasing a CD would be a great way to help me thank her for this silly yet deeply personal theme song. I am grateful, and a little humbled, by this. Doesn’t hurt that it makes me laugh every time I hear it, either.

And before I let you get to the song, a special thanks to Senior Producer Chad Campbell. He doesn’t realize how in awe of him I am…I mean, the guy has people like Jill and Carl Kasell on his speed dial, for heaven’s sake. How cool is that?

 Charlie's Theme, by Jill Sobule [0:53m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

As many of you know, my plan was to cancel my two XM Satellite Radio subscriptions…I honestly haven’t listened to the radio for weeks now other than for a minute or two in the car until I get annoyed with the lousy sound quality, and only hear daily The Bob Edwards Show episodes via the on-line feed (something I had planned on explaining once I canceled), but those plans went horribly awry.

Anyone who knows us knows that in all things, I am “bad cop,” where my wife is “good cop.” That is, I have a firm outline of right and wrong and tend to expound on it at the top of my considerable lungs, where she is the diplomat, the one who uses kindness to get what she wants. So I had her call XM to cancel, knowing if I did it and the retention expert started lying to me about where the $1.98 in rate hike is going, I would end up going ballistic for no good reason on some schlub who is trying to make a living getting people to continue to throw money into a dying industry. I told her to handle it, and…er…she did. And we still have two radios subscribed.

Seems the retention expert gave her a deal in exchange for an up-front payment equal to two months without the improper rate hike, and she bit. I still haven’t decided whether or not the poor sound quality and unimpressive programming is worth the $4.00/month/radio, although I pegged the worth of the on-line feed for my listening to one show at $5.00/month (again, something I wanted to explain once I canceled), but this does buy me a few months to get my act together in the car - there’s another MP3 player on-order that you will read a review of once I put it through its paces. And at least we aren’t paying $15.00/month, which I assure you XM Satellite Radio is not worth. (Especially now that the board of directors has extended the contract of the CEO that caused the downfall of satellite radio as an industry, and given him a quarter-million-dollar-per-year raise to boot.)

Edit August 6, 2009: Checked my invoice, and it turns out the guy Annie talked to at XM was a lying weasel. Ok, so it’s only a little over three dollars, but I really hate being lied to and hate it more when someone lies to my family, so they can kiss my patoots come December.

From the New York Times: Music Labels Reach Royalty Deal With Online Stations

Of course, artists don’t get any of this windfall…only the major studios will receive this ransom payment. Still, as long as Slacker Radio lasts for a few more months, I should be able to legally record enough music to last me the rest of my life, so screw the labels.

From the New York Times Gadgetwise Blog: Your Sirius XM Bill to Jump About $2

Gotta love this pull-quote: “It’s not a conundrum: prices go up, services go down, and I go back free FM.”

And if you read my comment on the Gadgetwize blog, you’ll see I’ve decided - July 29th, I will no longer be a full XM Satellite Radio subscriber. More on what I’m doing, how I’m doing it, and how you, too, can stop paying the ever-increasing rates for less and less service in the upcoming weeks.

Stop me if you’ve heard this before…

A few months ago, SiriusXM violated the spirit, if not the letter, of the FCC ruleset governing the merger by raising the rates on secondary radios in the family plan by $2.00/month, and by adding a $3.00/month charge for the on-line “service.” This caused me to reluctantly cancel one of my three subscriptions.

Then they began to charge a $15 fee for equipment swaps (these have always been free, at least on the XM side) they don’t even tell their subscribers about! This means if you buy a new radio for any reason and change the ID of the subscribed radio, they will charge you $15 for the privilege, just as they charge a $15 fee to initially register your radio. I don’t quite understand it, but you need to pay them for the right to pay them (?!), even if your radio is stolen or lost, and you spend a boatload of money to buy a new radio.

Now continuing the “nickel-and-diming” of their loyal subscribers, effective July 28, 2009 they are raising the rates for primary radios for everyone not on a lifetime plan by $2.00/month (actually $1.98), and “family plan” radios by $1.00/month (actually $0.97). Of course, they are prohibited by the FCC until next year from raising the rates, but they are doing it anyway.

How can they get away with this?
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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.

Not that SiriusXM needs any more bad publicity, but now they are ticking off some of their most loyal customers by promising included access to higher-quality on-line streams and then not delivering.

While the reason is as yet unclear, there seem to be two possible yet mutually-exclusive possibilities; 1) They technically screwed-up and are currently prohibiting their customers from accessing the streams inadvertently, or 2) only the low-quality 32kbps stream is included in the long-term “lock-in” requiring a payment of $2.99 for the “Premium” streams. The latter could cause the company a problem, though, as customer service representatives told many of those who paid for long-term commitments they would be receiving the higher-quality streams as part of their package.

Either way, it’s yet another black eye for the satellite radio carrier, upsetting even some of the most ardent XM “fanboyz.” I’ll be updating this as information arrives; stay tuned.

From Orbitcast: Leaked: Inno firmware v2.11 with FM modulator turn on

From the article: “This handy piece of version 2.11 firmware - with the FM mod turned on - fell off the back of a truck and landed in the hands of yours truly. And now, it’s available for all Orbitcast readers to enjoy. To be clear, this firmware update is not authorized by Sirius XM Radio… but that’s what makes it fun right?”

Now that hacked firmware is a reality, is it possible…after all this time…that someone on the outside might actually fix that d*mnable DST bug in 2.11???

From the Motley Fool: Helping Hand Will Put Bite on Sirius XM

From the article: “The company is certainly not out of ideas to milk more revenue out of its user base. It has moved to increase monthly rates on additional subscriptions under the same account. It plans to charge for premium online streaming….None of the moves are easy sells at this point. Churn may spike as subscribers cancel additional accounts.” I will, anyway.

From p2pnet News: The RIAA and the Broadcaster Shakedown

From the article: “After 15 years of failing to understand that their traditional business models are completely useless on the Internet, the RIAA has returned to the only way they know to make a dime in the new neighborhood; the broadcaster shakedown.” Read this article, then be prepared to contact your congresscritters.

I’ve been whining a lot lately about XM Sirius XM satellite radio. They are bought and sold with annoying regularity, the sound quality keeps dropping, and their pricing is going up next month (thanks, Mel, for lying to everyone to get your merger completed). While I’ll handle that by dropping a radio so I can pay less than before the price increase in protest, I can’t really drop the radio my parents’ use…my mother loves Escape, the “standards” channel. But the events the past week or two have kicked me in the tail to start setting up a backup plan for when Mel Karmazin finally sinks the ship completely and the satellites are re-purposed for DirecTV.

I actually started thinking about this back in October listening to the Halloween holiday channel; contrasting Gore to last year’s Igor scared the bejeezus out of me, so I wanted to find something I could live with for next Halloween. Yeah, something like the old XM Igor.

To solve this, I started using the demo version of StationRipper, a software package that allows you to (legally - the RIAA might want to stop you, but for now it’s still fair-use to record any audio for personal use) record Internet radio stations. I looked around for a Halloween channel programmed to my tastes, and when I found one I started recording it. It didn’t take long for me to have a playlist of a few hundred songs, which should be perfect for next year’s holiday season.
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…with Sandy Magnus and Mike Fincke is available at this blog post.

From Forbes: Malone Eyes Sirius’ Satellites

From the article: “In the battle of the billionaires, John Malone may want more than just his 40.0% equity share in Sirius XM Radio. He may also want the broadcaster’s satellites.” Also: “Miller Tabak analyst David C. Joyce said that Liberty Media’s Malone may have offered a $530.0 million bridge loan to Sirius XM not only to forestall a takeover attempt by rival Charlie Ergen but to lay claim to the 12 satellites Sirius is operating.” And that loan is only about half the debt that comes due this year, so we get to watch this happen all over again later in the year.

From Reuters: Liberty to loan Sirius $530 mln, get 40 pct stake

From the article: “Liberty Media (LINTA.O) has agreed to $530 million in loans to Sirius XM Radio Inc (SIRI.O), saving the satellite radio provider from possible bankruptcy and giving Liberty a 40 percent equity stake.” Company survives…for at least another few days.

From the New York Times: DealBook Column - Sirius XM’s Fate at Stake in a Radio Cliffhanger

From the article: “If the deal doesn’t hit a last-minute snag, Mr. Karmazin will have managed to save his company — and his job (Mr. Ergen wanted to fire him) — by pitting some of the most hard-nosed negotiators in the business against each other, all while he held what no doubt looked to be a losing hand.” If true, this is absolutely amazing…the man who singlehandedly destroyed two companies and an entire industry, not to mention losing stockholders billions of dollars, manages to keep his job and his perks? I will never understand big business…and clearly I am way too honest to ever be rich.

While we wait out the remaining hours in the life-and-death struggle Sirius XM is in (thanks to mismanagement, not circumstances), let’s review a few additional news stories from around the web:

From 247 Wall Street: Sirius (SIRI): Firing The CEO Does Nothing

A quote from the article: “Creditors do not seem to want to accept the inevitable. Sirius is almost surely dead, certainly as a public company and perhaps as a viable entity of any kind.” Ouch.

From MultiChannel News: Can Dish’s Ergen Be Sirius? - Buy Of Satellite-Radio Firm Offers Uncertain Upside

From the article: “How did it come to this? Just nine months ago, Sirius was riding high on its $13.6 billion merger with XM Satellite Radio. But a crushing debt load — $3.3 billion — a faltering economy and dim hopes for the future have put Sirius’ and Karmazin’s back up against the wall.”

From the Philadelphia Inquirer: Jonathan Takiff: Is satellite sunk? What may happen to Howard Stern & others if Sirius XM goes belly-up

From the article: “Worst still - for all you Howard Stern fanatics, music freaks and Major League Baseball game listeners out there - a breakup of the business seems a very real possibility.”

From CNET News: Creditors may oust Sirius XM chief

From the article: “‘Creditors will act quickly and definitively if they perceive that management is acting in their own interest and not in the best interest of the estate,’ Edward Weisfelner, a partner with Brown Rudnick, the law firm representing the creditor group, told the newspaper. ‘The board of directors should carefully consider the ramifications.’”

Things are getting interesting, but I’m going the heck to bed. Wonder who will own the company when I get up? ;)

From Financial Times Alphaville: Sirius XM weighs up offer

FT Alphaville reports Sirius XM is weighing up a financing offer from Liberty Media ahead of a Tuesday deadline to repay $175m in bonds in a potential transaction seen as thwarting EchoStar’s attempt to take over the US satellite radio company. Dunno exactly what they are weighing, since it’s this or floating face-down, but…

From the Motley Fool: Speculation: More about Sirius XM (SIRI)

Even the Fool, which hasn’t been right about anything dealing with XM, agrees with the previously-blogged Slate.com article.

From Rapid TVNews: Sirius-XM: Is Mel out of the DooDoo?

From the article: “These two giant media players [Echostar’s Charlie Ergen and Liberty Media’s John Malone], both based in Denver, Colorado, have reputations for playing the hardest of hard-ball. It is generally accepted that whoever ‘wins’ Sirius-XM will make significant alterations to the pay-radio outfit. Which is why Chapter 11 Bankruptcy might still end up being an attractive option for Karmazin’s team.”

From Advertising Age: Sirius XM Is Forced to Face the Music

From the article: “Mel Karmazin’s dream of creating an alternate radio business with Sirius XM Satellite Radio is turning into a nightmare, as slowing subscriber growth turns expensive talent into scary debt and the specter of bankruptcy looms large.”

From Follow the Media’s Tickle File: Satellites crashing

From the short: “Mel is trying to pull one more rabbit out of his sleeve. It will – in statistical likelihood – be his last. He needs to convince Liberty Media’s John Malone to buy a piece of Sirius XM’s junk debt, due February 17, to prevent bankruptcy. Mel is the world’s greatest salesman. John Malone didn’t just fall off the pumpkin truck.”

So it ain’t just the next two days that should be interesting…