XM Satellite radio has decided to suspend inexplicably popular morning show hosts Opie and Anthony, for airing crude remarks they elicited from a homeless man. This kind of thing happens in morning radio, but that would be COMMERCIAL OVER-THE-AIR morning radio, which is regulated by FCC decency standards. If you’re listening to some now, you may find that’s hard to believe, but it’s true.

But XM is a Satellite service, which uses a private broadcast medium which is not regulated. So why did this happen?

Well, the FCC may not have anything to say about it, but XM is currently seeking approval for a merger with Sirius, and just like TV in sweeps month, they want to give the impression that the programming is great instead of the usual crap that you actually wind up getting. So this move makes the Government a little happier.

The listeners, not so much:

“I signed up for XM because it’s uncensored. I like these guys because they are so unfiltered,” said Placentia resident Paul Hebert, who canceled his $12.95 monthly XM subscription Tuesday in protest.

He wasn’t alone. Hundreds of angry subscribers have flooded XM’s operators with calls to cancel since the suspension was announced Tuesday. About 60 listeners smashed their XM receivers Wednesday outside the WFNY-FM studios in New York, where Gregg “Opie” Hughes and Anthony Cumia continued to air their tamer, over-the-air broadcast for CBS Radio.

Satellite radio can’t afford to lose 100 listeners! That’s why they have to merge in the first place. The industry has put itself in a really interesting bind - they are selling an alternative to the sanitized broadcast. In order to get government approval to merge, they have to sanitize, which means you’re paying 13 bucks a month for nothin’. Well, there’s still diversity of programming. You can’t get foul language, but you can get a Brazilian Harp music program any time of the day or night. And who doesn’t want that?

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Update: Curious about just how mad Sirius subscribers are?

This entry was posted on Friday, May 18th, 2007 at 1:11 am and is filed under Digital Wonderland, General, Radio. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.