The Ignition Project

I did a little bit of looking around and here’s what I’m able to deduce:

1. In the channel merge, some channels were pulled from XM and renamed to match the original Sirius channels. (Think SBC buys AT&T and changes name to AT&T)
2. These channels broadcast from XM’s studios where their playlists were not explicit prior to the channel merge.
3. These channels have either not updated their playlists to be explicit due to oversight or intentionally. This is what’s important - if it’s intentional, they had better fix it.

So far, looks like they fixed it. eXonyte confirmed Faction and Octane are not edited, and this morning I heard My Own Worst Enemy by Lit .. and we all know the line “‘cause every now and then, I kick the living shit outta me” .. and that played unedited. This backs up my theory they just weren’t ready for the switch and the XM stations didn’t change their playlists.

If the censorship is fixed - awesome - but they still need to put back BackSpin.

Update 11/17: It’s not fixed. They’re playing a mix of edited and unedited on Lithium.

I wrote this letter on their online feedback system. I hope it doesn’t fall on deaf ears:

I would like to complain about the new channel lineup. I previously called customer care and they were supposed to note this on my account, but to ensure the customer care operator actually noted my account, I am writing you.

Here are my complaints:

1. Most music is censored now. I understand this is because the same feed is used on XM and Sirius now and those channels aren’t marked XL on XM. That’s fine - give them the shitty feed and let us keep our profanity. The artist would have left the profanity out if that’s how they wanted the song to sound. And, hey, that’s one of the reasons Stern is on here - because of the lack of censorship. Yet now you’re censoring music.
2. BuzzSaw 19 is now Boneyard 19, and Eddie Trunk is an asshole, so fuck him. But besides that, you’ve replaced it with the AC/DC limited engagement channel for the next two months. Sorry, AC/DC is not that great. Give me back BuzzSaw or move AC/DC, please!
3. BackSpin 43 is gone, leaving effectively three rap channels - new rap, new rap, and well, new rap. Awesome thinkin’ Gomer! XM still has their old school hip-hop channel - I want ours back.

Please give me a reasonable timeline for when you guys will undo some of what you did, in particular the censorship. One of the reasons I even chose Sirius was the lack of censorship and therefore Howard Stern and my music as I want to hear it. Expect to lose all three radios as well as a loyal Stern fan if you continue to censor your music channels.

Also, be rest assured that the contents of this are being posted to a relatively high traffic website - please don’t sit around and do nothing. I would love for the manager of programming to read this and set all of his/her minions straight and fix this mess. And for the love of God, don’t send me a canned response.

I’m pretty happy to be a Sirius subscriber. Commercial free music for the win! Anyway, today they pushed a major channel update that incorporated a ton of channels from XM, sans commercials. Among those channels they moved, they replaced almost all of the pop channels 4-9 with XM versions or combined with Sirius versions. Which I like a lot better. The Pulse moved up to 12 (taking over what used to be Super Shuffle?), and they put a real 90’s pop channel there, which is awesome because I didn’t like The Pulse, but I definitely dig 90’s on 9. I’m also pretty happy with the fact there’s a 2000’s pop channel, because people in my car sometimes want to listen to something besides my presets, and that’s fine. Now, it’s stupid they didn’t put it on channel 10 or 20 to fit in the numbering scheme they’ve been using (except that would piss off Bruce Springsteen and/or Octane, but screw them both). And what pisses me off about that is that they replaced Boombox with that channel.

And that’s not the only channel they killed that I liked. They killed BackSpin 43 and BuzzSaw 19 too. I would say BuzzSaw wasn’t dead per se, but Eddie Trunk is annoying - I much prefer Long Paul, Keith Roth, and Kim Mulligan - and my experience with Eddie is just at Rocklahoma. Especially since they replaced BuzzSaw with AC/DC radio until next year. Yeuck - AC/DC rules, but not 24/7. Throw in some other hard bands and you get, well, BuzzSaw! Either way, it looks like we screwed XM out of Boneyard, so I guess I can be happy about that (but we got screwed out of it too - it doesn’t start until next year).

That said, on the other presets I had that changed, I am totally happy with the new changes. bpm can replace Boombox as far as I’m concerned, and they kept the Sirius DJs for Big 80’s (80s on 8).

Update 11/13: Since they’re broadcasting the same feed on both XM and Sirius, the XM “non explicit channels” that made me not buy XM in the first place are fed over to Sirius. I’m fucking pissed. 1-888-539-SIRIUS (7474) is the number to call. Seriously, I’m paying $6/mo, I want my profanity goddamnit.