Not true? You'll have to show me, without me having to risk hundreds of
dollars to find out.

The point is not how many or how few companies control satellite radio. The
point is that it's run under a different business model, and therefore can
afford to air formats that OTA radio has had to abandon because they can't, for
whatever reason, sell them. Better still, the music channels don't hew to
someone's idea of hooks played in auditorium tests. Playlists are far deeper
than OTA radio could ever hope to be. If your complaint against OTA music
formats is "how come we never hear this, this or that anymore?", satellite
radio likely does let you hear it.

Best example: If you're over 54, OTA radio presumes you listen to conservative
talk. That is literally the only format sold to advertisers targeting the 55+
demo. I don't know the channel lineup for Sirius, but XM has probably a dozen
and a half channels that easily appeal to the 55+ folks, just on the music
side. When was the last time you heard an OTA radio station playing 1940's
music, movie soundtracks, show tunes, American standards, world music or
African music, outside of a few eclectic shows below 92 MHz on the FM dial?

And if diversity really bothers you, look at the non-music side. Fox News,
CNN, Headline News, ABC News & Talk, CNBC, Bloomberg, MSNBC, BBC World Service,
C-SPAN Radio, XM Public Radio, America Right, America Left. News from every
conceivable place on the political spectrum.

It's no wonder that companies invested in OTA radio are worried, and well they
should be. Satellite radio may never reach the critical mass necessary to make
a serious dent in the audience OTA radio has (and if they do, it will probably
take over a decade at current rates of growth), but the fact that it has them
worried at all shows that the public can now see and hear what they're missing.

In all honesty, OTA radio ought to have bigger worries from a whole other
source. I saw a recent article in Advertising Age, saying that broadcasters
should be much more worried about personal music players. So far, XM has 2.3
million subscribers and Sirius about 1.2 million. However, sales of iPods so
far total about 10 million...and I haven't heard so much as a peep from
broadcasters about iPods. Some car makers and after-market car stereo vendors
are even making plug-in adapters for iPods.