You've heard my rails against Clear Channel, and you know I hate all things related to them, but love them or hate them, I've given into The Man:  I purchased XM Satellite radio last week.

I know that M. Giant is just freaking out right now.   (Well, freaking out is a bit strong.  I'm fairly certain he's not running around his house, screaming at Trash that He Can't Believe I'm Such A Traitor and all that stuff.  I mean, if he is, that's fine.  I just don't think he cares all that much what I do, but I might be wrong.  I'll bet M. Giant is mildly surprised right now.  How's that?)  I mean, I'm the one that told him of Clear Channel's ownership of XM, warning him to Stay Away from it and all.

Anyway.  I like XM's competitor, Sirus a lot.  They have better content, including NPR and a great showtunes channel.  I KNOW!  Every gay man's fantasy is to have showtunes and an admittedly liberal viewpoint digitally available at all times!  I would have been a fool not to get Sirus, right?

Well, not so much.  Turns out XM is approaching 750,000 subscribers, and Sirus, according to my informal poll, has about four.  So I went with the company that I think will be around the longest. 

I know that XM has some commercials and no NPR, but they have BBC, so I can get my commie-leaning-pinko-news from them, and work on my fake-o James Bond accent, too.  As for the commercials, well... I have 100 channels to listen to, and can switch away.  My attention span can't take uninterrupted streams anyway.

Another cool thing is that I was able to get different setups for my receiver.  See, I spend a lot of time in my car, so I bought the radio, and a car kit.  But I also wanted to have the digital love at my desk during the workday, and so I was able to get a boombox, too.  Sirus didn't offer such a flexible setup.  It was pretty much car-only with them.  Not good.  XM it was.

So how do I like it, you might ask?  So far, so good. I'm digging all the selection, and it sounds great in my car.  I like my little antenna, too.  It's important that criminals know that I've got expensive equipment in my car, and there's no better way to do that than with a big black bump on the roof of my car.

You're going to kick yourself once I tell you that Sirius is the one that has a channel devoted to gay & lesbian talk. Yup. SiriusOutq. Check it out streaming on the web.
I've been listening to them on the web at work, and its pretty good. Especially Michelangelo Signorile in the afternoon. From listening to the callers, you'd think 2/3 of the truckers out there are gay. Go figure.
So enjoy BBC.. but tell all your queer friends to get Sirius so they can tell you about what they heard on OutQ!
;-)

I CAN'T BELIEVE YOU'RE SUCH A TRAITOR!

Kidding. Maybe you could still flip off their HQ once in a while, though.

That is what I like about you Uncle Timmy. Swallowing that pride and following the masses after a little self-reflection and study. Good for you!!

Clear Channel only owns about 3% of XM -- a lot less than GM and most of XM's top stockholders, AFAIK -- so you don't really hear much of their influence, except on the talk stations (which carry a lot of Clear Channel content) and the "KISS FM" channel (a feed of CC's KIIS -FM in Los Angeles with music played during some of their commercial breaks). CC's influence on XM is waaaay overblown, so I don't think you could be called a CC "sellout" except by people who don't know any better. Besides, XM's music stations (other than "KISS" ) are much more interesting than CC's, with better programming and maybe two minutes of commercials per hour on about half of them. (The other half -- the ones that don't play so much mainstream stuff -- don't have commercials, except for some annoying station promos). I got into XM back in February on a lark, and I'm sure glad I did.