Slashdot Mirror
Why (FM, Not XM) Radio Sucks
wemmick writes "The Washington Post has an article "Can XM Put Radio Back Together Again?" which discusses the history of marketing FM radio, how XM could be different, and about Lee Abrams -- "the man who shackled FM radio to the tyranny of mass market research" and is now program director for XM."
You in the big cities and even you in the more heavily populated rural areas may not realize what this means. But ask anyone who has driven across Montana, Wyoming, and one or both of the Dakotas: There are literally miles and miles where you cannot get any radio at all. I'm not saying "nothing but talk" or "nothing but Hat Act music". I'm saying literally NOTHING.
For this reason, I'm guessing that satellite radio receivers would be a big hit in Ryder/UHaul trucks. It would also keep them from having to reprogram the radio settings at every location.
OK, your wrong. And corrected. XM is radio waves, delivered from a satelite. The signal delivered is a digital signal, but that doesn't keep it from being a radio signal. It's an electromagnetic signal in the radio frequency part of the spectrum (several gigahertz, but much lower in frequency, and longer in wavelength than light), so it's radio. You can't tune it in on your Walkman, but that's because 1) your Walkman doesn't tune to that fequency, 2) The Walkman antenna isn't designed for that frequency, and 3) the Walkman demodulator was not designed to demodulate and decode the digital signal; but that doesn't mean it's not a radio signal. You can't tune in a taxi cab or a cop car on a standard unmodified AM/FM broadcast band radio either, but they still use radio signals.
Standard AM radio is both analog and amplitude modulated (the strength of the signal changes in relation to the analog signal). FM radio is frequency modulated, in the normal FM bands the analog signal is used to change (modulate) the frequency of the radio signal. But there are plenty of digital formats that can be and are sent over radio waves, including XM radio.
I'm an American. I love this country and the freedoms that we used to have.
XM isn't gonna save you... ClearChannel invested in the company, and carries much of ClearChannel's network programming.
Here. I got all this from www.howstuffworks.com
XM Radio uses two Boeing HS 702 satellites, appropriately dubbed "Rock" and "Roll," placed in parallel geostationary orbit, one at 85 degrees west longitude and the other at 115 degrees west longitude. Geostationary Earth orbit (GEO) is about 22,223 miles (35,764 km) above Earth, and is the type of orbit most commonly used for communications satellites. The first XM satellite, "Rock," was launched on March 18, 2001, with "Roll" following on May 8. XM Radio has a third HS-702 satellite on the ground ready to be launched in case one of the two orbiting satellites fails.
XM Radio's ground station transmits a signal to its two GEO satellites, which bounce the signals back down to radio receivers on the ground. The radio receivers are programmed to receive and unscramble the digital data signal, which contains up to 100 channels of digital audio. In addition to the encoded sound, the signal contains additional information about the broadcast. The song title, artist and genre of music are all displayed on the radio. In urban areas, where buildings can block out the satellite signal, XM's broadcasting system is supplemented by ground transmitters.
Each receiver contains a proprietary chipset. XM began delivering chipsets to its XM radio manufacturing partners in October 2000. The chipset consists of two custom integrated circuits designed by STMicroelectronics. XM has partnered with Pioneer, Alpine, Clarion, Delphi Delco, Sony and Motorola to manufacture XM car radios. Each satellite radio receiver uses a small, car-phone-sized antenna to receive the XM signal. General Motors has invested about $100 million in XM, and Honda has also signed an agreement to use XM radios in its cars. GM began installing XM satellite radio receivers in selected models in early 2001.
I have XM.
I really do miss the local stuff. Let's see...moron morning DJ's doing prank calls, commercials for local exterminators, commercials for local car dealers, commercials for local plumbers. Then the afternoon drive home, featuring the EXACT SAME SONGS played the previous day's drive home. Then there's our AM radio lineup. The only thing more boring than AM radio is baseball, and now that football season's about over we get to look forward to either baseball games or old geezers talking about baseball. Oh, and I also miss the talk show hosts that fall into either the poor Rush Limbaugh imitator category or poor Dr Laura imitator category. Gee...yeah, I really do miss that local content.
OK, the only thing I miss is the weather. Traffic reports here are a joke anyway. Of course, I've got the ham radio (2M FM for storm spotting mostly) in my vehicle so I can just turn on 162.550 Mhz and listen to our local robot reading the weather forecast.
At any rate, local content here sucks. Bigtime. I had totally given up on any local station except for NPR, and the extreme liberal bias of the commentators was annoying the heck out of me. And guess what, the NPR station here just had the national content, delivered via satellite. So, yeah, even the local station I listened to just rebroadcast satellite programming.
I think the thing that gives XM it's edge is that they have 100 channels. You get 20 Mhz of bandwidth (a little less, actually) so you can fit in, what, a dozen, maybe a dozen and a half or so stations? So you get the variety of content. you get both a bluegrass and a folk station. You get a college and an alternative rock station (2 actually). Hip hop, rap, electronic. Whatever you want, they've got it somewhere.
It relays a few ClearChannel networks, but not too many (in the neighborhood of 3-5). In addition, CC doesnt own enough stock in XMSR to affect any major business decisions.
Not true. Sirius' music channels do not have commercials, all the other channels (talk, news, sports, etc) do have commercials.
As sholden also said, radio waves is not only correct, but it more precise than electromagnetic (no hyphen) waves. I might have a directional point-to-point link between two locations and someone could tell you it was done with electromagnetic waves, but you still wouldn't know if it was done with light waves or radio waves (or some other part of the spectrum). On the other hand, if you're told that it's radio waves you also know that it's part of the electromagnetic spectrum.
Every type of energy that travels in waves is a part of the electro-magnetic spectrum, including visible light
Technically speaking, every type of energy that travels by waves is not a part of the electromagnetic spectrum. Some are, but not all. Sound waves (to give just one example) are not part of the electromagnetic spectrum, but do transfer energy and do travel by waves.
And yes, I did misuse your and you're and am ashamed of myself.
I'm an American. I love this country and the freedoms that we used to have.
Okay, so I have an Alpine XM unit on a CDA-7878. First off, it is incredibly entertaining. You WON'T always find what you are looking for, but you will find something and it doesn't suck like FM programming. On the other hand, XM has a lot of problems. First off, the compression screws with the music a little; enough to be noticed, but probably not enough to matter to most. Second, there is a focus on music and not on content, necessariyl, which manifests itself in three ways: 1, the commercials for the stations are long and goofy/magoo/stupid; 2, the deejays are loud, obnoxious, and just as stupid as fm deejays most of the time; 3, the talk radio that is there is nice, but where is NPR/PRI that Sirius has? In reality, if you get this, you will probably listen to, maybe, five channels, regularly. I am starting to get fed up with the track that XM has taken. I see no more intelligence than the market research dictates there must be. Something for everyone it is not...quite. However, I like the idea of sat radio enough to, maybe, give Sirius a try if I ditch the XM. XM has certainly made the idea of no commercials worth the extra $3. I REALLY don't think they should have enlisted such an aged fellow to lead XM.
Damn.. do American FM stations really play 18-24 minutes of ads per hour, like that article says??
Why would anyone bother listening to the radio if it's like that? Wouldn't you rather have silence than 4 ads for every song??
...why they don't have promotions? Say, subscribe for a year or two and get the receiver and adapters for free or at a reduced rate, like they do with satellite TV. Joe Potential-Customer might be wary at the steep price, but offer instant rebates or the like and he'll join faster than you can say MSN. I suppose they don't have as much money to throw at their investment as MS, but it would probably do them better in nabbing customers, I would think. I read through the /. comments and I see that the primary reason nobody wants this system is the expensive receiver price.
Damn you, 1996 Telecommunications Act! If it wasn't for that, there might not even have been a NEED for XM. Benefits the citizens my ass. I'd almost rather listen to the heavy 60 freeway traffic on my way to UCR than listen to one of the three or four songs they play on the radio, but the FM stations are a step up(?) from the white noise of a random unused station, and I don't like listening to screaming and engines and all of that, so I'm stuck. I swear I get more unique music from OC Remix than from those stations, and the former is based solely on derivitive works (of video games, no less)!
And another thing, what's with all the DJ talk? Are they so cheap they don't want to pay royalties to crank out another hour of songs they play twenty times a day anyway? What would it cost them, another ten bucks? They HAVE to get a huge bulk rate on these things.
There is more to rock than Aerosmith, Queen and the Beatles, or at least my dad tells me, but you'd never know from the playlists they have. Granted, I'm young and all, but I DO like that style music, and it grows very old after a couple weeks(!), but they keep playing it. With the "six major genres," that gives me twelve weeks of variety, which include songs I've probably listened to anyway.
There, I'm done. Please don't kill me for my ignorance, but the point is I like v-a-r-i-e-t-y; the kind that's found in P2P networks, webcasts and college radio. Sure, a lot of it is crap or novelties or foreign or porn, but at least it's different.
Yes, if you want true liberal try pacifica radio. They are the left's answer to Rush Limbaugh. NPR is actually pretty mainstream, despite the cries of the right to the contrary.
----- There are two kinds of people in this world, my friend; those with loaded guns, and those who dig.