big snip

I'm wondering if the Circuit City technician was feeding me a line of
BS in order to save himself some work. Can anyone offer any advice or
information on this? Never having had satellite radio in my car
before, I don't have anything to compare the signal to, in order to
know if this is how it should sound or not.

Two questions: First, which Sirius radio did you have installed? If it's an
FM modulated unit,
you may just be tuned too closely to the frequency of a local (likely NPR or
religious translator) station.
Second, I think the Circuit City tech was feeding you a line. I've had two
XM radios installed at
Circuit City and both times the antenna was mounted on the roof of the
vehicle near the tail gate -
both are SUV's. Furthermore, most of the Sirius and XM antenna are magnetic
mount - meaning they
won't harm the paint.

Since both Sirius and XM are digital services, poor signal is really almost
meaningless - it either works fine
or it totally drops the audio altogether due to packet loss. You really
shouldn't hear "static" unless you have
one of the FM modulated unit and then there's some other RF force at work.

HTH,

Jeremy