Sirius has the great power of reaching people and giving them the best of theater of the mind. The Sirius Comedy Stations are a great example of Theater of the mind at its’ finest.

When listening to any of the Sirius Comedy Stations, you can pretty much imagine the sights and smells of smoky nightclubs or great concert halls. You can hear someone delivering their material onstage and the audience interaction.

On Sirius 106 Raw Dog you get the best uncensored comedy anywhere on the dial. No holds barred comedy from some of the best in the business past, present and future.

Sirius 105 Laugh USA is considered comedy for the whole family. You can also hear some great material from many comedians who regularly appear on television talk-shows and sitcoms.

SIrius 103 Blue Collar Radio is a great Sirius Comedy Station with some of the best in “Redneck” comedy. Comedians have taken the lead in getting material out there thanks to some of the great work of many American comics with southern accents!

Sirius 106 The Foxxhole will have some comedy shows from several great comics. It is not a 24/7 comedy channel but still features some great moments and great material. Jamie Foxx, whom the station is named, delivered some many memorable performances in his earlier career days. He still has a sharp wit and great delivery.

The Sirius Comedy Stations are all great entertainment. You can find comedy on other channels as well, notably Howard Stern’s Stations. Check them all out for a great laugh or two!

Many people purchase subscriptions to Sirius Radio on the attraction of commercial free music. This is arguably one of the biggest reasons people are drawn to Sirius Radio.

In order to bring in revenue, you can find advertisements on many Sirius Radio Stations. All outside of the music categories.  Advertising on Sirius Radio apparently is a pricey investment but as many company have attested, it can pay off tremendously.  Many companies advertise products on the channels of Howard Stern. When the King of All Media himself voices many of these commercials, the companies are able to even attract more of the audience to product.

There was some musing some time ago that SiriusXM would start allowing advertisements on the music stations. This discussion seems to now have thankfully waned. Surely SiriusXM PR people realized that there would be a major massive backlash if this were allowed to happen.

The risk would be too great. Many customers who were drawn to Sirius because of commercial free music would no doubt vacate their subscriptions.

Commercial free music provides a soundtrack. That soundtrack of having very little interruption provides the listener with the most enjoyable listening experience. This is the big separator which distances Sirius radio from terrestrial radio.

SiriusXM needs to continue making the music stations commercial free. Subscribers are now used to this, so changing this concept would spell disaster for the company.

With regulatory approval, the Sirius Canada Merger with XM Canada will likely take effect later this 2011 year. Both companies will follow suit with SiriusXM out of New York and become one company.

It is the hope of many Sirius radio and XM radio subscribers in Canada that they will now be able to access the best of packages for each respective entity.

Sirius subscribers will hopefully be able to obtain the Oprah channel along with full NHL hockey and Major League Baseball coverage which XM radio carries. In the same scenario, XM radio subscribers will hopefully be able to now access great programming on Sirius such as the Howard Stern and Martha Stewart channels, as well as Sirius NASCAR radio and the Sirius NFL football radio stations.

This kind of cross programming will allow many users to fully embrace the kind of entertainment available to them on satellite radio. How great for a hockey fan like myself to be able to find any NHL hockey game being broadcast for online listening. In addition to checking on my favourite teams I would love to be able to hear the commentary in between periods of these stations which are feeding the games through to XM radio subscribers. Hopefully this merger between the two entities will be of benefit to subscribers while the company works to gain and subsequently maintain a presence of profitability.

It is my understanding as well that Sirius radio units will be easily programmable in order to access the best of XM once that happens. Sirius customers will not be required to purchase new equipment.

I invite readers to comments and share opinions on what you think of the merger and if we will benefit from it.

The King of All Media triumphantly returned to his channels in the New Year after signing another deal with Sirius which keeps him on their airwaves for another 5 years guaranteed. Much to the delight of the majority of Howard Stern fans, and shareholders of SiriusXM.

There is one noticeable change in the format to the show. The show is now one hour less, with Robin Quivers starting the news block at 9 a.m. instead of 10. Despite the loud complaining of some fans on Stern Fan Network, this new formatting will actually work well for the show and here is why.

On the shows best days, you will have a great guest on where the interview is rolling along really well. Or, you could have no guest and the show could be on a roll by talking about some major event in the news world and having all of these great humours twists added in to it. On the busy days you have a ton of stuff crammed into a short period of time. What these scenarios do is take listeners up to levels where they are responding well to the humour, taking in the stories and listening to the interviewing. Then because of time constraints the listeners are left wanting more of what was going on.

Many will argue with me that this really is not different than the older formats of the show even dating back to the days on Terrestrial Radio. I suppose there is some truth to this. Think though for a minute if you can. What if the show is having an off day? So far 2011 has started out great for the Stern Show but there will be an off day. Even Howard will admit when he has an off day with the show. You could be listening to the show and the humour is not hitting out of the park like it usually does. Or you are listening to a really drab interview with some idiot who should not be on the show. In these instances listeners have the relief that they now there is a further time constraint now in place. So at some point a seemingly bad part of the show will have to wrap up sooner in order to meet that time deadline.

To the fans who complain, I am just happy to have Howard back and on the air. It is better right now than no Stern show at all.

Tough and Truth talking Radio jock Todd Clem (a.k.a. Bubba The Love Sponge) did not return to Sirius at the beginning of the year despite a barrage of e-mails to SiriusXM’s head office requesting that they give him a deal. Bubba and his crew host a wildly successful Terrestrial Radio show and featured their own uncensored show most Friday mornings on Sirius at Howard 101.

As of this post drafting (January 10, 2011) Howard Stern insisted that he would love to have a way to bring Bubba and his crew back to the channels in some way.

Bubba seems content with his new home at Radio IO where he has taken many of his loyal Bubba Army members with him.

Meanwhile Howard Stern has been filling in the space of time once occupied by Bubba’s show with “Mammary Lane” classic Stern moments.

He will be back for 5 more years. Let the Revolution continue!

Howard Stern announced on Thursday, December 9th that he will return to Sirius after the two week Christmas break. The King of All Media was surrounded by most of his on-air staff, and guest announcer George Takei in the morning. The King pulled his usually brilliant move of suspense by dragging listeners and staff on by first suggesting he was going to be a professor at his Alma Mater Boston University.

The announcement comes at a great time of turnaround for SiriusXM. The company has acknowledged that Stern’s presence has increased subscribers and advertising revenue dramatically. Even those who may have shunned Stern in the past have acknowledged that he is one of, if not the most powerful force in radio.

Stern made it clear after he made the announcement that it will likely be his last 5 years in radio given his age. Stern also suggested that SiriusXM needs to look at things in the long term past these coming 5 years.

With Stern now coming back, Mel Karmizan and the other execs can sleep better knowing that the threatened subscriber boycott will now not happen.

In the great traditions of all things Stern, I will end this post with one word.

BABABOOEY

Fans of the show are elated at this news, and look forward to 5 more years

One year ago I had the pleasure of responding to an advertisement where the owners of this website were seeking content about Sirius Radio. I am pleased to have been at this since and hope to stick around for some time to come.

We have seen in this year that the state of Satellite Radio is again about to rapidly change. As of this writing, there is still no decision on any contract extension for Howard Stern, and a deal to finalize a merger between the Canadian Entities still sits with the bureaucracy of the CRTC.

Whatever happens in the next few weeks with SiriusXM, I will continue to use, enjoy and promote the product. I appreciate the feedback and comments that you have all sent me over the last 12 months. I am open to ideas about pieces to write and hearing your concerns about programming and things that are happening in the Satellite Radio world.

Recently my smoke lighter cavity in one of my vehicles burned out. So I could no longer hook-up my radio in the car. Certainly it was ok for me to return to listening to CD’s, yet I felt such a huge piece of my daily life was missing because I did not have access to programming handy. On the night I draft this post (November 26th) I was able to hook up a vehicle kit in our main vehicle while out. It was such a relief to be able to hear Sirius content in the car again.

This is how passionate I am about the product. The beauty about being a customer is we can criticize and comment on the positives and negatives we get from this product.

Looking forward to another interesting year. Thank you all for reading.

Sirius Canada and XM Canada have finally merged. It was announced last week that thankfully Sirius customers should soon be able to order the best of XM programming.

Of course the deal unfortunately is subject to regulatory approval by the CRTC.  It is my hope thatthe CBC will sell its 40% stake in Sirius Canada. It is not right that taxpayers are funding an enterprise which while awesome, is not something that every Canadian Taxpayer pays for.

It was revealed this past week that Dr. Laura Schlessinger would be making a permanent move to Sirius in 2011.  Her show was already available in syndication through Sirius 102.

I am not a fan of Dr. Laura. Period. I can listen to her show for about 5 minutes before I start to get completely annoyed. Her “advice” often is dished out based on her religious views. Her delivery is nothing short of annoying. That being said, I will defend her right to free speech just as much as I would anyone else. Even if I disagree with what they are saying.

Here is where I have a major problem. SiriusXM has no trouble signing her to a multi-million dollar deal. Howard Stern and others who are on his channels, are completely hung out to dry right now. Howard, the Bubba Radio Network Crew and Scott Ferrall are hugely entertaining talents with a ton to offer.

So I cannot figure this one out….

I also need to clarify for a few readers who recently posted comments about programming content. This is just a reminder message that this site and myself are not employed by Sirius Radio. This is a fan site where I enjoy writing about SiriusXM news, views and programming. SiriusXM does monitor this site for content and comments from readers. Recently head office in New York was made aware of this site’s existence. So please keep the comments coming.

So I ended the last post with how I was requesting GNR’s “It’s so Easy”. I then remember asking the DJ to warn prospective listeners that they may be offended by some of the lyrics. It did not even dawn on me at the time that Radio could just not play that song on the air. (Hey, I was 8).

I hung up the phone in disappointment, yet a bit of understanding. For my age I was pretty sharp. My thought process immediately turned to the people who like me might want to hear that song.

What about them? What about all of us wanting to hear the music we like?

Since pretty much that moment, I dreamed of the idea that a service would come along like what we enjoy from Sirius.

When I first heard Howard Stern in my high school days, I was blown away that someone who pushed the edge like this was getting away with so much on Radio. It was awesome to me. Now that he is on Sirius, he has total Radio Freedom as a performer.

When I first started going through what was available on Sirius, it blew me away. Finally after all these years a medium existed where I could hear songs with “offensive” language, and also get the whole realm of Heavy Metal from classic stuff to new material!

Just about a year ago I answered a freelance writing job posting where I could write about Sirius. Nearly a year later, my words are still appearing on this page. The comments and criticisms are majorly appreciated. Keep them coming and thank you for reading.

Dann

So is The King of All Media negotiating a final deal? Or will he retire?

I am returning to this topic because of his recent banter on the Howard Stern stations about what his possible plans might be come contract end. Howard appears to be talking about a 3 day work week and developing a 3rd channel.

This is an open paragraph to Mel Karmizan. SiriusXM needs Howard Stern. The audience he has brought over has contributed to the increase in revenue and as a fan, I still want 5 more years of good entertainment and comedy genius from Howard and his crew of mostly insane people.

Many of Howard’s fans are saying that they already conceded too much with a 4-day work week. If we are to get three, better that than none at all people! There is so much material in the archive tapes that you could run a million specials about different themes.

I heard a great idea tonight about a music channel that Howard would run. This would contain live performances from his show and favourite musical artists of his. I would tune in to something like this for a change of listen for sure.

At least the rumours are apparently true that things would start moving in September are true. Hoping for the best. Although I would respect whatever decision Howard decides to make. There is more to Sirius than Howard, but there would be a major gap without him around.