Re: Why XMPR drives me bonkers...

tps · Post by **tps** » Thu Feb 15, 2007 11:15 pm

Did you send a copy of this to Lee Abrams? Would he listen if you did?

Seems to me that, between XMPR, the XM classical channels and Real Jazz XM ought to be a great replacement for terrestrial public radio.

One thing they could do to make you (Charlie) happy is to move the XMPR music programs of to music channels; they already air Ben Sidran's jazz show on Real Jazz. They might move St Paul Sunday to XM Classices, for instance.

Post by **CharlieSummers** » Fri Feb 16, 2007 3:16 am

tps wrote:Did you send a copy of this to Lee Abrams? Would he listen if you did?

Doubt it. I did send a link to the original blog post to Kevin Straley (VP of Talk Programming) with copies to Eric Logan and Hugh Panero. Of the three, I'd bet Panero actually read it; the others are no better than 50/50.

tps wrote:Seems to me that, between XMPR, the XM classical channels and Real Jazz XM ought to be a great replacement for terrestrial public radio.

Yeah, you'd think...

tps wrote:One thing they could do to make you (Charlie) happy is to move the XMPR music programs of to music channels; they already air Ben Sidran's jazz show on Real Jazz. They might move St Paul Sunday to XM Classices, for instance.

I used to say that, but I have since changed my mind, solely because if they move the music stuff off, we're likely to get the reduced codec used on, say, ABC News and Talk. Yipe...imagine The Bob Edwards Show sounding like it was coming down a bad phone line...

tps · Post by **tps** » Sat Feb 17, 2007 4:26 am

CharlieSummers wrote:Yipe...imagine The Bob Edwards Show sounding like it was coming down a bad phone line...

I was an engineer at NPR member station WBAA from the mid 1970s through the early 1990s, so I did get to hear NPR programming coming down the phone line for many years, starting with live coverage of the Watergate hearings. When we put in the first satellite system around 1980, there was about 1 month of overlap when we had both the line and the satellite feed. Night and day, although the line was about 1/3 second ahead of the satellite. Before the satellite system NPR sent all their music programs to the stations ON TAPE, 1/4 inch half track stereo at 7.5 ips.