Bent Corner

I blogged a while back about the time I tried to purchase a Sportster 5 Sirius satellite radio from my local Hagerstown Best Buy. I was paying cash. The person at the register refused to sell it to me unless I gave her my personal private information. I refused to do this so they refused to sell it to me. They told me that Sirius requires them to record the personal private information of anyone buying on of their radios.

I contacted Sirius and they informed me that this was not correct. There was no requirement to gather the personal information of the people that were buying their hardware.

The Best Buy employee lied.

There now appears to be one more reason not to give your personal information to an employee at Best Buy. Amanda Hopkins, a former Best Buy employee in New Mexico has been indicted by a grand jury on numerous felony counts of credit card fraud. She worked as a customer representative at Best Buy. Her duties were opening new accounts for customers. She obtained customer credit information and used the information make numerous purchases on their accounts.

Best Buy doesn’t trust their employees so why should you? Every Best Buy I have been to has a person standing the exit checking the receipts of customers that purchase high value items. The reason? They are afraid that the person who ran the sale did not charge the right amount. They worry that their employees with have friends or family members come in and buy something and they won’t charge the correct amount. Instead of scanning the iPod player or the Blu-Ray player, they’ll scan a DVD movie or a pack of gum.  By all appearences, it looks that you paid for what you were purchasing.

I’m not sure what took so long, but the FCC has finally agreed to allow Sirius and XM to merge into one satellite company.

I used to have XM, but I got rid of both my radios and switched to Sirius a few months ago.  I decided that I would rather listen to Howard Stern in the mornings then Opie & Anthony.  I felt like their show had gone down the tubes since they made the jump back to regular radio.  When they weren’t going to commercial, they were complaining about other radio shows getting better ratings then them.  It got boring.

Howard Stern on the other hand has been Howard Stern.  He’s as great as he has ever been.  In fact, he’s actually better then ever.

The music channels on Sirius are better then the music channels on XM.  I find myself listening to a lot of channel 22 First Wave.  They play a lot of classic alternative and new wave.  I also enjoy channel 29 Punk Rock.  They play nothing but new and vintage puck rock.

One of the things I don’t understand about this merger is one of the stipulations forced on Sirius and XM by the FCC.  The two companies had to agree that after they merge, they will not raise prices for three years. If the government can do that with satellite radio, why can’t they do that with gas?

This is the kind of thing that makes me glad I have an iPod. XM Satellite Radio has pulled the plug on Opie and Anthony (O&A) for 30 days. This stems from crude sexual jokes about Condoleeza Rice, Laura Bush, and Queen Elizabeth made by a homeless man on their show.

I read the press release on the XM Radio website. It sounds as though they suspended them not for the crude comments made last week, but because O&A didn’t seem overly contrite yesterday while talking about the incident.

Comments made by Opie and Anthony on yesterday’s broadcast put into question whether they appreciate the seriousness of the matter. The management of XM Radio decided to suspend Opie and Anthony to make clear that our on-air talent must take seriously the responsibility that creative freedom requires of them.

This seems extremely petty on XM’s Radio’s part. If they were going to suspend them, they should have done so after they made the comments. Then again, they were NOT the ones that actually made the comments. Now it seems they are being suspended for not sucking up to XM Radio management.

XM Radio may want to punish Opie and Anthony, but I feel like I’m the one that’s being punished. I will still be required to pay the monthly $12.99 subscription fee. I just wont get to listen to content I usually enjoy listening to. I guess I could cancel for the month, but they would then turn around and charge me a $10 connection fee to reestablish my account next month. That’s assuming O&A ever return to XM Radio.

XM Radio wins no matter what I do.

I’m not going to pretend that the comments weren’t extremely rude, crude, and in bad taste. The thing is, that’s what Opie and Anthony do. It’s what their show is all about. It’s a funny show that is often times extremely raw in nature. You never really know what you are going to hear. Because the show is on satellite, Opie and Anthony are free from FCC restrictions on content.

This makes me wonder why XM Radio didn’t have a problem with any of the other things they have done the past three years. Was everyone else fair game, but Condoleeza Rice, Laura Bush, and Queen Elizabeth off-limits? If I didn’t know any better, I would think this had something to do with the possible XM/Sirius merger. The one that would require the Federal government to step in and change the law to allow both satellite radio companies to merge.