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Satellite radio has more choices and better sound quality than broadcast. For those who drive a lot or really enjoy music, it may be worth the cost of new equipment and monthly fees.
By DAVE GUSSOW
© St. Petersburg Times, published July 29, 2002
Satellite radio offers more choices, near CD-quality sound and almost a sure-fire family argument: Who operates the remote control?
As if you don't have enough remote controls littering your family room, you can get one for the car, too, if you sign up for Sirius Satellite Radio and its 100 channels of music and talk. It proved a valuable gadget when we took the new technology for a test drive.
My son liked rock hits. My daughter enjoyed current pop favorites and country. My wife relaxed to jazz and alternative. I got locked into a channel of classic rock called the Vault.
We came away from our seven-day trial impressed by the music choices, less so by the talk and news offerings. And for a subscription service, we were surprised that the usually clear signal sometimes blacked out momentarily as we traveled.
Sirius and competitor XM want to do for commuters what premium cable did for TV, offering consumers programming they can't get on commercial radio.
Like cable TV, satellite radio has costs and special equipment. Entry-level radios and antennas, which also can receive AM and FM, start around $200. Installation can run $50 or more, and activation is another $15 or so. Each also has a monthly subscription fee: Sirius, $12.95; XM, $9.95.
Each has its own satellites that give it coast-to-coast coverage. That means you can drive from Tampa to California and never change the station. Sirius broadcasts from New York; XM, from Washington.
For our test, Sirius loaned us a radio -- attached to a BMW X5. (That may have been a subtle effort to influence our opinion, but, hey, you can't expect them to show off their fancy radio in a '78 Ford Fairmont.) The radio in our test car, a Kenwood Excelon KDC-X817 with a CD player, has an online price of about $290. (The car starts at $39,545.)
The first trip was similar to riding into a new town and looking for a radio station you like. I changed channels, listened for a while and moved on.
It wasn't until I parked the car and flipped through a booklet that outlines the categories that I could figure out where I wanted to be. The categories:
Pop (eight channels);
Rock (11 channels);
Country (six channels);
R&B/Urban (eight channels);
Dance (four channels);
Jazz/Standards (seven channels);
Latin (five channels);
Classical (three channels);
Variety (eight channels);
News (14 channels);
Sports (five channels);
Hispanic Talk (five channels); and
Entertainment (16 channels).
I headed for classic rock, took a trip through country and stopped on Broadway before settling on the Vault as my favorite. It's the kind of album play that just can't be found on commercial radio.
It features well-known artists, ranging from the Rolling Stones to Bruce Springsteen to the Kinks to Traffic, yet it plays mostly album cuts that were not released as singles or were not hits.
On the Way Home by Buffalo Springfield, Ballad of a Well-Known Gun by Elton John, Devastation Row by Bob Dylan. Heck, even Frank Zappa made it on the air (an acquired taste but also a great blast from the past). It was a refreshing change from the same old tunes played relentlessly on commercial radio.
Another example of programming that isn't usually found on commercial radio: The Standards and Broadway channels had a day devoted to Oscar Hammerstein music on his birthday.
In June, XM's Frank's Place channel had a two-week show of "The Complete Sinatra -- A to Z," every one of Sinatra's commercially released songs played in alphabetical order.
No wonder an XM subscriber told me that he sometimes drives around the block before stopping at his house just so he can keep listening.
And both services have ad-free music channels, all 60 of Sirius' music channels and 34 of XM's 71. XM runs only 2 to 3 minutes of ads an hour on the other channels, still far less than commercial stations. Sirius says its ad-free music helps justify its higher subscription cost.
We did not miss the ads, and the DJs understood that the music is the attraction. They spoke briefly, giving song titles and artists, trivia tidbits and other factoids about the music scene. I could also glance at the radio's LCD display to see the current song and artist scrolling across the screen.
I'm not big on talk radio. The two channels I briefly visited were not particularly interesting, and both sounded as if they were speaking in a tank.
My colleague, Roger Fischer, the Times online editor, who once wrote a radio column, wanted to check out the news. He was not impressed that much of the news content was simply the audio portion of TV broadcasts (such as CNBC and CNN).
"Besides the obvious missing graphics, its scripting lacks the tightness of radio news writing," said Fischer. But he did like the two NPR channels. Sirius also offers radio newscasts from ABC and Bloomberg.
The Sirius satellite signal is received by an antenna on the car. In areas such as mountains or cities with tall buildings where reception may be a problem, the services sometimes use ground repeaters to enhance the signal.
I drove through major thunderstorms, with heavy rain and lightning, with no problem for the signal. I traveled across the Skyway and Howard Frankland bridges with the signal loud and clear.
Yet it wasn't flawless. I had blips where the signal was lost momentarily, near my house in north Pinellas County, in downtown St. Petersburg and Tampa and in Brandon. I also lost the signal when I used a drive-through to pay a utility bill.
"Like all satellite technology, you can have the occasional blip that comes from interference," said Jim Collins, Sirius vice president of communications. He said the problem could be anything from heavy foliage (the trees near my house?), transmission towers putting out too much power (Brandon?), tall buildings (downtown?). "It's a new technology. These things will just continue to improve."
In addition to tweaking the tech side, Collins said the service will wait for customer reaction to see how programming might be adjusted. "This industry is in its infancy," Collins said. "Everything is evolutionary. Not only will the technology improve, the sound will continue to improve, but the programming will continue to improve."
The question then: Would I buy the service? If I spent more time in the car, such as resuming my daily 56-mile round trip to St. Petersburg, it's likely I would subscribe. For people who drive a lot and who love music, it's almost a no-brainer.
Starting with the next model year, various automakers will begin offering satellite radio as an option. GM has invested in XM, while DaimlerChrysler AG backs Sirius.
Much to my family's chagrin, I have no plans to buy the BMW. Beyond the sticker price, it turned out to be quite a gas-guzzler. I need a car that gets more music per gallon.
-- Information from Times wires was used in this report. Dave Gussow can be reached at gussow@sptimes.com or (727) 445-4228.
Want to sample what satellite radio has to offer? Competitors Sirius and XM may not loan you a radio-equipped BMW. But both offer programming samples on their Web sites (www.siriusradio.com and www.xmradio.com).
Music:
The Pulse: adult contemporary
StarLite: contemporary love songs
Octane: modern rock
The Vault: album cuts from classic rock artists
Hot Jamz: current Hip Hop and R&B hits
BackSpin: classic rap, Old School
The Vortex: electronic dance
Swing Street: classic swing music
Broadway's Best: old and new Broadway tunes
Romantica: romantic Latin pop
Tejano: Tejano hits
Vista: classical chamber music by soloists, ensembles and chamber groups
Spirit: Christian hits
The Galaxy: showcase channel for special events or holiday themes
Talk:
CNBC: business and financial news
CNN Headline News: news briefs
National Public Radio: news, features and entertainment
BBC World Service: international news
The Weather Channel: weather
ESPN Radio: sports
Radio Deportivo: Spanish sports talk and live events
RadioClassics: shows from the golden age of radio
SciFi: science fiction programming
The Hookup: talk "with an urban flavor"
Intimate: talk "with a female slant"
Yak!: talk "about guy stuff"
-- Source: Sirius Web site (www.siriusradio.com)