tellhimfred.com

One thing I’ve noticed lately is that satellite radio customers are like members of a political party: they’re loyal, and are happy to argue over why their company is better than the other company, and why the other company stinks.

In satellite radio, there are only two horses in the race: XM and Sirius. And since there are only two, the companies are forced to differentiate themselves since they are selling essentially the same product/service. But instead of the companies, the listeners are the ones that are campaigning for their satellite radio provider.

I’ve definitely been guilty of this. I’m a very happy XM Radio customer. I have friends that have subscribed to Sirius, and I often find myself arguing with them about why Sirius is inferior to XM. When I listen to Opie and Anthony and hear clips of Howard Stern trying to slam XM, it’s like hearing a presidential candidate telling lies about the guy I’m going to vote for.

Back in July, I was listening to O&A, and they were talking about a show that was “ripping off” their Assault on the Media bit. The show was called “Phillips Phile”, and the host, Jim Phillips encouraged listeners to stand behind TV reporters and do wacky things in the background. And since Opie and Anthony had been getting lots of publicity for their listeners doing the same, it seemed like the show was stealing the bit. The part that got to me was hearing the host saying that he wanted to check with his bosses to see if they’d allow him to do the bit so no other radio station would rip him off.

So, I posted something about it here. Remember, this was in July.

Just yesterday, someone posted the following comment:

Typical O&A B.S.
Take an audio clip out of context…and then scramble like hell to make a radio bit out of it…

If you had haeard the actual show…You would know that Jim said I saw this grop of guys doing this bit…and I wish they’d come to Orlando and do it….and he went on to speculate if someone at the Station could pull it off…
Furthermore….it wasn’t about promoting his show….it was about having something totally unrelated in the background of a live newscast…
At the beach…have someone dressed up as a fish…
At a church….have a guy…standing in the background dressed up as the devil…

God Bless the O&A Army…whatever will they do next?

Of course, the first thing I wanted to do was post the actual audio of the Phillips Phile show, since what the guy actually said confirmed my post. But I paused for a second and thought: Why do that?

I mean, honestly, who cares?

I don’t know why I’m so caught up in a radio war. Sure, I love Opie and Anthony, and I can’t live without XM. But do I need to write about it?

The answer is yes. I do need to write about it. It’s embarrasing, I know that. But I guess that’s what blogging is all about. It’s getting your opinion out there, especially when the issue is completely unimportant. So even though I realize talking about why XM’s equipment is better than Sirius’ isn’t at all useful or important, I’m still going to do it. Even though I really miss hearing Howard Stern every morning on the way to work, I can’t bring myself to buy a Sirius unit (even though I’ve actually picked one up and started walking toward the cash register at Target twice now).

For some reason I want to support a team, but even more than that I want to have an enemy. It makes no sense to me but it’s the absolute truth.