A Study In Unfeasibility

Aug 21

That is the cutest carrot ever.

(Source: doctor-spanks, via fuckyeahbottom)

Aug 19

Disconnected.

One of the things that made life that little bit more bearable being 3500 miles from home was the fact that I could get BBC Radio 1 on Sirius/XM in the car. To be honest, I dislike most of the music that’s played on Radio 1 (with the exception of Dan Carter’s rock show), but I listened for the radio personalities, the UK news, the silly contests and that little extra connection to home.

And, last week, Sirius/XM decided to remove the channel from their programming.

Not a good move. Not least because some of us were listening for the news of friends and family back home who were surrounded by rioting. My home town (Croydon) was the epicentre of some of the worst of it. Plus, having R1 was like having a friend in the car with you, and now it’s gone.

So, in this day and age, what do slighted customers do? After complaining directly to Sirius and receiving nothing more than a crappy form letter reply, they head for social media to vent their spleens. There is a Facebook group demanding the return of R1 that is currently over 4200 members strong, a very active Twitter hashtag and plenty of blogs criticising Sirius/XM over their unfortunate decision.

This has had an effect - Sirius/XM have announced that they’re going to bring Radio 1 back, but only to their online service. What they seem to forget is that all BBC radio stations can be listened to online for free, and they want their users to keep their SXM subscriptions, and pay an additional $3 a month more to listen online! This simply isn’t good enough - many, many subscriptions have been cancelled because of this - not just those of British ex-pats, but of Anglophile Americans and Canadians who have grown to love the radio personalities, the features and the news coverage. And yes, for some of them, the music. Personally if I ever have to hear Swagger Jagger by Cher Lloyd again, it’ll be a thousand years too soon. Many people have found alternative ways to listen, either via smartphone apps or by downloading and timeshifting the shows themselves on their computers (this was my solution). It works sufficiently well, but it’s not what we should be having to do.

Anyway, if you’re American or Canadian and come across this blog, and you have a Sirius/XM subscription, please consider joining the fight by reblogging this, posting to the Twitter hashtag I linked to above or joining the Facebook group.