[Ken Carman]

I went with Sirius for two reasons. I looked at XM's programming and found it lacking compared with Sirius. At the time Sirius has three Left channels, two Right channels and an MOR talk. XM had one, Right-leaning I would guess. It also had more interesting music options. The second reason is I believe Clear Channel owns XM and I hate monopoly seeking entities. Their first goal is to turn anything interesting into limp over cooked noodles.They take less chances, like the Gay channel on Sirius. My wife and I find it interesting. I never knew the gerbil up the ass South Park episode had some basis in myth. Apparently there has been a long standing myth that Gays do that sort of thing.

I've had Sirius for quite a while now. I had stopped listening to the radio. Now I have a problem stopping. We're glad to pay extra. My only criticism is they haven't taken the music far enough and their play list is too limited. They could have a whole album side-playing/ whole CD playing channel. Whomever programs the Folk channel knows NOTHING about Folk music. And for some reason there are artists they NEVER or rarely cover. From my perspective.... Chicago (the creative, album side stuff), Rundgren, Christine Lavin (rarely at best), David Wilcox, Ponty... well I could go on but for those who listen I'm sure you have your own list.

They have a great opportunity to go where FM started to go and chickened out, and where AM started to go until it became almost totally operated by the Right. I don't mean just more "Left," or Libertarian or... For instance there was a guy in Atlanta who used to do fantasy talk radio, a GREAT concept. One of his schticks was about his very old aunt Zelda who had a lot of money and had put him in her will. She was in the hospital hooked up to tons of machines. He claimed he wanted to stop her suffering. Listeners would call and make suggestions like cutting off the power grid. The next day he'd come back and say he had almost got arrested, tell the whole story, and ask for more suggestions. It was funny. It was brilliant. It made you think about the topic like no standard rhetoric spewing pundit can.

But Howard is right, programmers are mindless sheep. (I WAS one... once.) Both XM and Sirius need to be more creative.