Satellite Radio

It makes sense to me that Sirius and XM Radio ought to take over the airwaves. If you listen to any commercial radio these days, as Yogi would say, you can’t listen to it.

Commercials take up about a third of the air time. With the clever little promos and "brought to you by…" there’s barely any time left for music. With the lousy, scratchy fidelity of FM, much less AM, I’m done. I fold. I’m officially not interested in radio anymore. Except for the odd ballgame, I just can’t turn it on.

When you consider drive time in your car, the reality of awful radio hits even harder. You’re hostage to the commercials unless you carry a pile of CDs around. You don’t want to be a driving hazard. You don’t want to scratch your CDs. There’s no doubt the answer is, satellite radio.

I’ve had satellite radio at home since early 2002. I like it! The fidelity is good. It isn’t super fantabulous, but it’s good. It doesn’t cut out. It’s better than FM but not as good as playing CDs. There are NO COMMERCIALS!

There are almost 200 channels. The cost is $10-13 per month. I think it’s well worth it. When I turn on the radio I am generally not in the mood to go grab a CD and fire up the big hi-fi. I’m more inclined to listen while reading the paper or doing odd jobs around the house (or outside the house with the outdoor speakers on). Hence I pipe the satellite radio through speakers all over the place and let it keep me company.

My favorite classical station does TODAY, what FM tried to do 30 years ago. There’s enough air time to fill that they’ll play an entire symphony. They’ll play all three movements of a piano concerto or sonata for example. They don’t have to worry about fitting in commercials. They seem to GET IT that we don’t want to hear smart alec DJs. We want to hear the music. The announcers seem to understand that too. They’ll mention their name, station and a quick comment about a work- but that’s it. Back to the music!

I love the fact that the tuner has a display that reads out the work being performed. One day my ear was caught by a very interesting piano work. I didn’t recognize it, but immediately liked it. It wasn’t one of Beethoven’s, but it was close. It sounded "after Mozart" but wasn’t Beethoven or Schubert, my favorites. I went over to the display to read "Kalkbrenner." I’d never heard of him. Turns out, he was a contemporary of Beethoven & Schubert. He lived from 1784-1849. I’ve since read that he was a more formidable performer than a composer. Yet this was an enjoyable sonata, a nice discovery if you will. Not that I discovered it… but somebody spinning the discs at the classical channel knew it! Another time a violin concerto caught my ear. I didn’t recognize it but thought again, what a nice work. Whose is it?! I went to the display and saw "Wieniawski." Turns out he lived just after Beethoven (1835-1880) and wrote two wonderful violin concertos that aren’t necessarily in the league of Beethoven, Brahms and Tchaikovsky, but they’re well worth hearing, if not owning. The satellite radio folks have people choosing the music that know a heck of a lot more than I do- for which I’m thankful! It’s a pleasure to be introduced to new music that you enjoy, regardless of the genre.

My father is 80 and has Alzheimer’s. Sometimes when he visits we’ll toss on the standards channel. The second he hears Ella, Frank or Nat, he’ll snap his fingers and can some times even sing along a little. He can’t tell me what he had for lunch two minutes ago but somehow he can find these tunes in his memory. The musical options on satellite are ample. With the addition of sports programming and uncensored celebrities, there’s plenty for everyone.

The satellite radio people are doing a very fine job indeed. The people selecting the music have done, in my estimation, a terrific job! They seem to realize we don’t want to hear idle chatter. A quick bit of information is given and boom- back to the music. They’re hitting the nail on the head.

Our audio companies are slow to the party. We should have, today, right now, receivers and tuners with the satellite electronics on board. It is a slam dunk to me that ANYBODY who is exposed to satellite radio- will love it.