According to this article in the Globe and Mail, XM Canada and Sirius Canada are in talks to follow the lead of their US equivalents and formally merge. This is long overdue.
I am a big fan of satellite radio. I had an XM subscription since the day it was first launched in Canada and was quickly hooked. I could no longer tolerate the steady stream of commercials that tainted regular terrestrial radio and I began turning everyone I knew onto satellite radio.
When I bought a new vehicle last summer, it came equipped with Sirius. I prefer the programming of XM (largely because of its superior sports lineup), but have warmed up to Sirius over the past few months. I’m now a subscriber to both services, with a portable XM unit and Sirius in the Jeep.
It frustrates me, however, that I can’t have the best of both worlds like subscribers south of the border have. I have to listen to those “Best of XM” commercials on my Sirius radio yet I don’t have the option of adding the package.
I’m hoping that a merger occurs in Canada – provided there’s some sort of price guarantee like there was in the US. And while I’m on the subject of satellite radio, allow me to vent another frustration. Why is it that Sirius has decided to add DJs to most of the music stations? Now, these channels feature too much talk – which is what I subscribed to satellite radio to avoid.
Why incur the overhead these DJs present, when it would be more cost-effective to simply post the playlist online? If I want to know what song I just heard, I’ll look it up. No wonder Sirius stock can be had for about 11 cents a share! The very thing that made satellite radio wonderful, is being abandoned.
Hopefully the Canadian providers of Sirius and XM get a deal done to provide more comprehensive programming and get back to basics – and save the talk for the talk stations.