XM and Sirius channels merge at long last
By Donald Melanson 
posted Nov 12th 2008 1:09PM
posted Nov 12th 2008 1:09PM
It's been a long, long time coming but the once separate XM and Sirius universes are now finally, officially intermingling, resulting in some new channels, some renamed channels, some moved channels, and no doubt quite a bit of confusion for satellite radio listeners. The short of it is that XM users can expect to find 22 new channels, while Sirius listeners get 11 (mostly music channels), with a whole slew of other channels either moved, renamed, or both. Dig into the links below for the complete details, and expect to wait two to five minutes to receive the update if you haven't already turned on your radio today.Read - XM Satellite Radio New Channel Lineup
Read - Sirius Satellite Radio New Channel Lineup
Any word on when the sports channels will merge? I'd love to get MLB on my Sirius...
Major League Boredom?
Agreed! The only thing I ever wanted from XM is the MLB package. If I can get that on my current sirius radio, I'll be happy.
Wow - the only thing worse than watching baseball.....listening to it.
it'd be more entertaining if they were literal:
"here comes Johnny Rollsincash up to the plate. You'll notice he's adjusting his jock strap."
"yeah Bob, he's looking a little uncomfortable with that new carbon fiber scrotum protector; sure it's got a high strength to weight ratio, but it causes Jock Itch like the molten fires of hell"
"and now you'll see him wipe some tobacco dribble off his cheek -- if you look closely you can advanced tooth decay"
XM isn't getting the NFL?
For $4 extra you can get NFL, NASCAR, Howard Stern, Playboy and Martha. Ooh... Martha.
Wow. I'd put down 4$ for that! Listening to Howard Stern, Playboy, & Martha going at it in some NASCAR-NFL sport hybrid action would be sick.
I have SiriusXM and let me tell you something. THEY ARE MESSING UP!
They took the two BEST channels off and replaced them with channels that were originally on Sirius that SUCKKKKKKK
This isn't a good thing guys, i am seriously considering canceling my subscription if i don't hear what i was hearing yesterday.
They are really messing up, and if they continue to do so. Believe me, i wont be the only one canceling my subscription. Watchhh
I'm tired of hearing this Kayla chick promote some Christian rock station. If I wanted to listen to it I wouldn't be on channel 48 and if I wanted to listen to her I would have bought Sirius. I'm not impressed with some of the things Covino is talking about either, as I said, I said, I paid for XM not Sirius. BRING BACK SQUIZZ!!!
WIN
You XM guys get to listen to Jason Ellis on Faction now. Channel 28 on Sirius / Channel 52 on XM.
Epic Win!
On that Squizz point... Crap! I hate the squizz DJ's, they're a bunch of douchebags! I Had Sirius for years and i just bought a car with XM. I've been listening to squizz for 3 months because it's all the hard rock i can get, but it sucks! The DJ's and the content and just everything about OCTANE is WAY better than Squizz!
-Taylor
I can hardly stand to listen to Jason Ellis on Octane in the mornings... I want to call him up, ask him to shut up and just play the music.
Couldnt agree more. Similar situation, new car with XM. Octane >>>> Squiz.
i always was jealous of my friend for having sirius...their rock line up was superior to xm's. Top Tracks was getting kinda old, Classic Vinyl has a little more variety. I am thankful that they kept Deep Tracks though, thats a great channel. Haven't listened to Lithium, Octane seems like an improvement over Squizz...Kinda wished they would give you some kind of option to keep what channels you liked...any word on the a la carte stuff? It would be sweet if you could get a few of the stations back/kill some of the new ones (Margaritaville im looking at you...)
The reason sirius side only gets 8 is simply cause xms music lineup blows! they have 2 good channels and all crap(for rockers) I am not commenting on other types of music since I dont have authority on them, but xm had a squiggle channel or squid or something uch god awful.... I am happy to see sirius rock is staying!
Guess what: I just confirmed that the Squizz guys (who are awesome, BTW) are taking over DJ duties for Octane. Guess you're getting a big wad of Squizz whether you like it or not -- it'll just have an 'Octane' label on it.
A big wad of Squizz. Does it come with a free facial?
NOOOOOOOO! lol my life is over! haha thank goodness for my 80gb mp3 player...
i vote the existence of something called "Squizz" as a sign of the Apocalypse
Squizz DJs make the channel. So happy to see they came over. I'll miss the hilarious Squizz channel IDs. "We're about to unload a big wad of Squizz!"
Great!
Does that mean the stations play lists can merge too?
Cause only 100 songs a week can get a little repetitive.
Damn straight, that's my problem with EVERY radio station terrestrial or satellite. Not enough selection in their current week's playlist.
Sirius' playlists aren't much deeper than that, and that's why most XM subscribers are mad about this (not to mention the fact that XM didn't announce this officially until yesterday at about noon, and Sirius subscribers apparently didn't find anything out until it all changed at midnight... though rumors had been rampant for weeks.)
A lot of people are mad, especially since it was said during the merger talks that this WOULD NOT happen.
Quit your griping...
At least its not as bad as listening to the 5 song playlist everyday from FM Rock stations.
The new line up is awful. I doubt I'll renew my subscription. XM was amazing when it first started, it started getting worse the more the tweaked it and they finally finished ruining it today.
Yeah I lost some great stations like Boombox on Sirius, but I realize what my local options are and well...they are absolutely horrible. lol I'll stick to Sirius because I can still get Lithium, Area and BPM(when it actually plays something good) and I can't get that kind of music locally.
Either way it will go out of business in about 2 years. Maybe earlier!
It was failed business model. They still have not made any money.
Sirius got rid of Backspin? But hey, I guess at least now I've got the '40's station :-S
I get the changes in the lineup, but I'm especially upset that Sirius chose to ditch the Disorder channel. I could listen all day at work, hardly ever hear the same song twice, and become aware of songs and artists new and old that I wouldn't otherwise be exposed to. I emailed Sirius but don't have any hope of satisfaction. If you know what I'm ranting about and feel the same way, I urge you to reach out to Sirius as well.
Yeah, no more backspin sucks! No more Boombox neither. There went 20% of my presets, and about 33% of the channels I normally scanned (though only about 5% of my listening time was there). Still, those are areas where you could really sink in and listen for a while. The "alternatives" suck, if you haven't been into hip hop since 97, or into pop crap since fetushood.
And why would SIRIUS rename Left of Center??? XMU on Sirius? They better keep Jake, Jenny, and Christopher. Blog stuff: not so much.
Is that why I turned on XMU at lunch and went "wtf is this blog stuff?"
Get your Left of Center out of my XMU, you sonofabitch!
Frankly all I want from Sirius is their Chill channel and I see its not moved yet. Much better then the XM one. Keep O&A and give us their chill channel and I'm a happy camper.
Also... what happened to the alacart promise? No news on interoperable radios? The only option for more sirius stuff cost more money. Its not what we were promised.
The Starmate 5 model is available on the Sirius website and it shows that it is capable of supporting a la carte subscriptions. Here's the link to the Starmate 5:
http://shop.sirius.com/edealinv/servlet/ExecMacro?nurl=control/StoreItem.vm&ctl_nbr=2640&siId=3577190&catParentID=7875&scId=7875&oldParentID=
Also, here's a link to the a la carte info (WARNING: PDF):
http://www.siriusretail.com/ALaCarte_Insert_052208.pdf
Interesting info thanks. Also for the record the Chill channel DID change. Its not Sirius XM Chill and from the few mins I heard its clearly the Sirius Chill channel that adopted the new name.
Good news in my opinion.
Chill is what i listen to as well and it desperately needs more music, or like you say, a second Chill station.
I'll have to listen again for a bit see if anything has changed...
does chill play buttery beats?
lingalig!
Any word of a la carte programming? That will be the best thing to happen to any kind of subscription service.
not with your current radio. everyone with the radio built into their car is screwed.
Just keep Les Davis on Pure Jazz, or Real Jazz, or whatever you want to call it, please?
He's a cool dude in a loose mood, and he knows his Classic Jazz.
I got paranoid today when I didn't hear The Verge on XM 52...then, thankfully, I got a message from their Facebook group that they've moved to XM 87. That station has introduced me to so much great, new music that I don't know what I'd do without it.
Too bad they don't merge the companies, I have both and was looking forward to having a combined bill and have one radio be the sub account. But no. They are still billing separatly and I believe the FCC should be looking into this. Either they are merged or their not.
That takes time. I remember when Sprint and Nextel merged it took over a year for both services to be on the same bill.
Between this and the 'Best Of' packages, there's no real reason to have dual subs any more though...
I don't understand those who thought this merger was good. As an XM subscriber I HATE this new programming change. ALL of my favorite channels have changed to the sirius ones. If I had wanted Sirius programming, I would have bought it to begin with. Isn't this a violation of their agreement with the feds? I thought they had to keep both and offer choice? Reduction in consumer choice is not a win for anyone Donald, or would you support rules saying only one site of a kind was allowed - what if that turned out to be gizmodo? In nearly every area there has been consolidation and it has not been good for the consumer. The only thing that can only ever be good is choice and variety in services.
agreed.
I am not liking the changes either. Looking at what Siruis is offering on XM now...NFL, NASCAR, Howard Stern...yeah, that's why I did not subscribe to Sirius to begin with. Anyone else notice there seems to be a lot more talking on the music stations? I am paying for the music, not some banal commentary on the musician's sex life. And I don't know what Tony Hawk is selling...and I don't care. Each time that spot starts, I change the channel.
Agreed, give me back my Squizz and Boneyard (yeah I know it's "on hiatus"). Hair Nation so far isn't too bad but I've heard like 6 Queensryche songs in less than 24 hours. And these DJ's need to SHUT THE F--- UP! I don't care what you think, if I want mindless DJ babble I'll listen to terrestrial radio.
Wait, they no longer have the "On the Rocks" Channel...
I thought it was a mistake that that was an "Online Only" channel and now it's gone?
Good luck getting this customer back.
You want to compete with iPod and Zune (especially with their new music service), you better get better channels with less repeats and stop making it so difficult to cancel the subscription. Having to call an XM rep to cancel is a pain in the ass since they keep trying to make us stay. Other services you can just make with the clicking. That alone makes me NOT want to come back.
I like XM more than regular radio, but you need to do something more than just merge channels with Sirius. Come on, do we really need 24 hours of Bruce Springsteen? I like him, but it just seems like wasted time and space.
After doing some research, the jazz/lounge music station "On the Rocks" has been supposedly gone off the online service since July of this year. I've been gone from XM since Spring.
I was thinking about coming back when Sirius came on-board, but after looking at the "new" channels, I gotta say ... what's going on over there in their research department? Are they not viewing the blogosphere?
Change is good! Hell.. I dont get to listen to them in India..
Fred, Lucy, Ethel, XMX and many other rock stations on XM are gone. XM now has all those lame artist-dedicated stations like Springsteen, Grateful Dead and Margaritaville. Blecch.
This makes me a sad panda. Very sad. I guess I'll have to spend my evening sorting through the "new" stations I want to bookmark and seeing what else got screwed up, including channel numbers, and deciding if I'm going to keep my subscription after all this garbage.
I don't think XM "gained" much; they mostly killed off others in exchange for existing SIRIUS stations.
no! they're just renaming them! phew! you scared me there. i thought i was gonna lose my ethel! but now its "alt nation". as long as they still have the content, the name's not so important to me. :)
@ a ham sandwich (which is, coincidentally, what I brought for lunch today):
Oh, ok. Thanks for the clarification. I haven't had a lot of time to sort through things yet so apologies to all for my jumping the gun. I do know one thing: XM now has 1st Wave, and that's cool with me.
Lithium is a poor replacement for Lucy, IMO. Haven't had a chance to listen to it too much but what I did notice was that it was dominated by Pearl Jam and Alice in Chains-- yeah, good, but there was more alternative than just those guys, you know. Plus Lucy just had more... I don't know... Oh, that's right-- it had the awesome XM Saturday Night show.
And don't even get me started on The System going online-only (which is one step away from "gone forever")... yeah, I know that's due in part to Worldspace dying... but there's nothing like it on either service!
About the only really good thing to come out of this, as far as I'm concerned, is NPR Now and football.
You know what? F%$# it. I just cancelled my XM, after close to two years. This was after loving the service and recommending it to family and friends.
No Lucy makes me a sad panda. I wasn't going to renew XM after my first year @ $7/mo was over. But about a week before it expired, I found Lucy.
I love that station. So sad to see it go.
Siriusly?
Well played sir.
Thanks for killing Backspin 43, assholes!
That's EXACTLY what I said when I saw the new line up. Now they're referring you to CH. 40....great, so classic hip-hop is bunched in with the current crap played on 40. I want old school, not listen to some idiot repeating "pop champagne!" before hearing some true music.
That's EXACTLY what I said when I saw the new line up. Now they're referring you to CH. 40....great, so classic hip-hop is bunched in with the current crap played on 40. I want old school, not listen to some idiot repeating "pop champagne!" before hearing some true music.
Consider me a former happy XM subscriber. Removing 65 - The Rhyme and not replacing it with any dedicated old school channel is criminal. Channel 65 is now empty, so I doubt it was a bandwidth issue. Aren't 95% of classic hip hop fans now in their 30's, with jobs and disposable income to spend on unnecessary items like satellite radio? I would think that might be an important part of the demo's they need to attract.
So they have completely merged, yet they appear as two separate companies, who have separate channel lineups, and charge extra for what makes them different. Well, that makes perfect sense, my check is in the mail!
What they don't really mention is that the content of those "re-named" channels has changed, as well. I chose Sirius because I preferred what they played over XM on similar channels. The renamed channels I listened to today were not business as usual, it was a total switch to the XM playlists. Not to mention two lost favorite channels. Chalk up one lost customer to the merger.
so where are the FCC mandated minority channels? Chinese speaking people are still waiting!
They are in China. Please assimilate. Thanks for playing.
Yuck. Yuck yuck yuck. Friends with Sirius kept telling me how much better it was, and now that I'm getting to see it firsthand, I can finally, definitively tell them how wrong they were.
What a sweet yet Pyrrhic victory.
Anyone know where the content from 39-Boombox went?
those assholes killed Boombox, most of the songs there weren't anywhere else!
RIP XM 66Raw. Chalk me up as another lost listener. They dropped my fav rap channel and my only way to protest is to drop XM.
Right on. Im going to miss 66 raw. I liked Leo G and Mz Kitti
looks like they cut down on the thug rapper stations and also merged the one billion latino stations into one. I might keep my XM subscription after all.
Merge the Latin stations? Dang, just as I was getting into Caricia.
I'll be cancelling my service with XM. The merger has really shortened the playlists on XM. They've removed Fugus 53, they've removed old school hiphip (The Rhyme).
Man, do I miss Fred, Ethel, and Lucy. Those were my core stations. I'll have to check out the new stuff and reprogram.
It would be much easier if they just used Insignia from Dash Media already. Then I could just have it find the music I like, regardless of station.
yea, thanks for jacking The System away from me!!! Great job! I don't have any money and i was gonna have to cancel but i really didn't want to cause i loved the system and some of the other channels. Now, thanks to these people, i can cancel and not be disappointed at all!
Yes, that was just strange. They yanked Move off of 80 but brought back Area. Now The System is gone and it leaves a channel hole. No telling what they are going to put in there. At least BPM and Chill stayed.
I also noticed we lost one XM HD channel....now we only have Pops in XM HD.....pretty lame.
Finally, they get around to this, and in the process they wipe out the one channel I listened to the most: America XM10. Kind of fitting I guess, America is going in the crapper anyway. I wonder if the Fed will bailout Sirius/XM? They think they can bail out everything else.
I didn't listen to that channel, but I laughed my ass off at your comment. so true!
what , they got rid of 50 hip hop nation and 43 backspin , i love modern and old style rap but not together , this sucks , ugg and 50 is replaced with r and b what does that mean for 51 , i havnt listened to my siruis radio today yet , so i dont know ugg
They replaced Ethel, Fred, and Lucy with their Sirius counterparts. The System is online only. They removed FineTuning altogether, and everybody at POTUS has been fired.
Enjoy the new lineup!
I've been waiting for this to happen for quite some time now. My dad is the director of sales for Citadel Broadcasting in the southwest (which is a company that own terrestrial radio stations), and he was always adamantly opposed to these two companies joining forces. Also, he always told me that this merger would never happen because of the guidelines set forth by the FCC, saying that there was to NEVER be a monopoly on satellite radio. I wonder how the two companies got around their contract with the FCC, anyone know the details?
Wow, dude for a newborn (that just arrived yesterday), you ask some good questions. Tell daddy to stop working so late (keeping testicle radio afloat) and fill you in on the last 2 years ;^)...
"I wonder how the two companies got around their contract with the FCC, anyone know the details?"
The FCC let them. They set the rules. They can set them aside.
The Move is gone too. Looks like I'll be canceling.
the Move was replaced by Area. The net loss is just one (System)
It's not about 'net loss', it's about losing what we like! Of the three channels I listen to 95% of the time, one was dropped (the System) and the other two replaced (Lucy and Ethel). And I don't like what they were replaced with.
If anything, Slacker's the beneficiary of this boneheaded move. I've had coworkers that I didn't even know had satrad complaining about what happened, since they didn't know it was coming.
I need to listen to see if I can deal. I wish they'd left good enough alone. How about a survey of their SUBSCRIBERS to see if they had any opinions of what they did and did not like.
Really, how hard is it to program an old school rap channel? Get a turntable and a bunch of 12" records, record them all to an ipod, hit shuffle.
siriusly, without boombox i dont know what i'm gonna do. i have found so many great bands through that station and now they are trying to tell me i might like Alt Nation. F*CKING ASSHOLES!!!!!!!!!!!!
Agreed! My preset was empty this morning! And call me crazy, but they dropped "Kids Stuff" in exchange for "Kids Place" which seems to play High School musical type junk. My 4 year old was *NOT* impressed on the drive to work/daycare this morning. Lets just say, we weren't listing to 116 very long.
Well, I guess XM subscribers are ticked, but Im not one of them. Hair Nation and Classic Vinyl are still there, Buzzsaw changed to boneyard, but is currently all AC/DC, so I guess I wont find out what the channel is really like for a while. Also, Hard Attack changed to Liquid Metal, Im kinda excited to see what they have to offer.
Boneyard sucks. I know this because I researched both providers carefully before deciding Sirius had the better stations, like "Buzzsaw". I lived for Buzzsaw and I'm not looking forward to Boneyard in January. And what kind of morons made it an all AC/DC station for like two months? I love AC/DC but come on . . .
Sirius Just lost a bunch of Channels too. Because of this we lost our beloved BackSpin Channel. What were they thinking.
Total BS, and absolutely NO WARNING from THE COMPANY I PAY FOR MUSIC that this was coming.
Media Conglomeration is great, eh?
Backspin 43, Boombox 39, and the Punk station need to be restored if they want my business
I think this sucks, the rock stations on XM sucked (Ethel & Squizz). I have had both Sirius in my truck and XM in my car and cancelled XM. Now they're taking the crappy DJ's from those 2 XM channels and ruining Octane & Alt Nation. I could care less about the other channels but these 2 I listen to 90% of the time!
Well, there goes Backspin 43. Universal Latino is gone too. This is s***. Only 1 Spanish channel? The only good thing about this IMO, is on January 1st, a new channel (for Sirius users at least) Cinemagic will be up. Pretty cool that I'll be able to listen to film scores on the radio. I'm definately going to check that channel out.
Does anyone know if the overall channel count is down? I can't tell but it sure seems like it.
SUCKS!!! where is the music variety and deep play lists that XM had????