In case you missed it, here's a video of Artie Lange's appearance on David Letterman last week.

In a duopoly, such as that in the satellite radio industry, it's a given that the media will do a "versus" comparison from time to time... many of which I ignore. They're usually the same crap and ultimately give you a wishy-washy conclusion ("if you like Howard Stern, go with Sirius - but if you like Oprah, go with XM!" yeah, great, thanks).

But this beauty on Associated Content caught my eye. First off, I should at least applaud the author for making a choice (Sirius won) - and the comparison is based on personal experience - but there's a few holes and I'm going to exploit here. So let's get to it shall we?

"XM has a bad habit of repeating songs. I may end up hearing one song five times in one day within a few hours period. With Sirius, that isn’t the case."

...has anyone experienced this? Maybe I'm listening to different channels than this author.

"Furthermore, I do not like the way XM names its stations."

...ok, I need to agree here. While cute, many of the channels are just too ambigious for the newbie to instantly know what kind of music is being played. But that's also what the neighborhoods are for - if you're in the Rock neighborhood, you kind of know what you're going to get (take a guess... Rock, good job). That said, Sirius isn't necessary innocent of this either. "Buzzsaw" and "Area 33" are really self-explainitory either. But aside from all that... is this really friggin big deal?

"Sirius satellite radio broadcasts a lot clearer than XM, especially in relation to the talk channels. People’s voices come across a lot smoother and can be easier understood than XM, which tends to be fuzzy."

...huh? Bandwidth - and subsequently sound quality - varies from channel to channel. I wonder if she's comparing a traffic channel to Howard 100. There's crappy sounding talk channels on both services. Sorry, that's the truth.

"It’s true that XM has 90+ music channels, 10+ sports channels, 20+ news and talk channels, along with a few traffic channels."

...90+ eh? Try 69.

"Along the same lines, if you will be doing a lot of listening to talk shows, Sirius has more of the popular shows such as “Discovery,” “Howard Stern,” and “Martha Stewart.” What celebrity talk show does XM have? The “Oprah Winfrey“ show. Sirius also has “Playboy Radio.” What does XM have that could compete with that? Nothing."

...she counts "Discovery" as a popular show? Nothing about HGTV or Food Network on XM? What about Dale Earnhart Jr? Jimmie Johnson? Ellen Degeneres? Cal Ripken Jr? Tyra Banks? Oprah's not even on yet!

If you're going to do a comparison, at least do a bit of research. Basing it on personal preference is fine - hell, that's the deciding factor for everyone - just try and give it a fair shake though. Want my bottom line? Fine, here it is: if you like Howard Stern, go with Sirius - but if you like Oprah, then go with XM.

[Associated Content] 

A reporter writing for Salon.com is looking for Orbitcast readers from Detroit, Richmond, VA or Jacksonville, FL. If you happen to be from these areas and are up for a chit-chat, please shoot me an email and I'll forward your info along.

Thomas Cipriano, better known as Captain Janks from The Howard Stern Show, got through to CNN's "The Situation Room" yesterday. Janks was posing as Wendy Hutchens, a California woman who claims that five years ago she had detailed chats about the death of JonBenet Ramsey with murder suspect John Mark Karr.

"Wendy Hutchens is joining us on the phone right now," Wolf Blitzer told viewers. "Wendy, thanks very much for doing this. Tell our viewers how you got involved with John Mark Karr." The fake Wendy, being impersonated by a man mind you, explained that she met Karr through a relative.

"So then what happened after that?" Blitzer pressed. "When did the E-mail, when did the talk of JonBenet Ramsey begin?"

The fake Wendy answered: "It started around September of 2001, when he told me that he knew more about the JonBenet Ramsey case than what anybody else had known - and that he was instructed to kill JonBenet by Howard Stern."

"All right. Well, that sounds like we've just been Howard Sterned, as they say," concluded Blitzer.

[NY Daily News via SSG]

The Wall Street Journal's Stacey Delo takes a look at the options available to people who are sick and tired of regular radio. She explores Internet Radio - highlighting AOL Radio (with 20 XM channels included) - as well as HD Radio, and of course Satellite Radio. She gives the Pros & Cons for each option, but gives a hearty endorsement for satellite - especially for in the car (where a majority of radio listening is done).

Check out the video (RealAudio) for yourself, I especially like the closing line about the iPod.

[MarketWatch]

Thanks Jimmy!

The New York Post featured a very interesting interview with XM's Opie & Anthony in this past Sunday's edition of "Hot Seat." They cover the feud with Howard Stern, the St. Patrick's Cathedral debaucle, and O&A's unprecidented syndication on both satellite radio and terrestrial.

Their logic behind why terrestrial radio was still important to Opie & Anthony - even after already being on XM for over 18 months - is oddly simple. Opie's response? "You get to reach a lot more people." While Anthony's answer was that terrestrial radio brings in "people who don't like you" as well as "the dregs of society, drunk off their ass at 6 in the morning."

There's no question that the dual-syndication deal has done great for Opie & Anthony's career, but whether it's shown similar benefits to XM is a question yet to be answered. Either way, it's an interview well worth the read.

[New York Post]

That's what this New York Daily News article would lead us to believe. According to Rush & Molloy, Howard Stern fans are in such an outrage - after he skipped out on the funeral of Gary Dell'Abate's father - that they're threatening to drop their SIRIUS subscriptions.

Allegedly, fourteen-thousand people have express their distaste on Stern Fan Network and Chaunce Hayden has declared Stern "A-hole of the Week." (Note to the Media: The mere mention of Chaunce Hayden instantly reduces the validity of your news piece.)

SFN is quick to bring up that the numbers are bit skewed in this report. At the time of posting this the thread in question was viewed 19,214 times.

Now don't misunderstand me. I personally would never miss the wake, or the funeral, of a close co-worker/friend... but I figure the numbers should be somewhat accurate if it's to be reported on.

[New York Daily News via Gawker]

There's a very interesting article on Mediapost about how the recent partnership of XM Satellite Radio and Google/dMarc will help pave the way for the next generation advertising model by 2010. They bring up the recent forming of e-Media Exchange - an automated ad auction system created by Toyota, Wal-Mart, Microsoft, Hewlett-Packard, and Home Depot. These disgrunted advertisers are fed up with the current, and highly subjective, advertising system and are working to create an automated and self-regulating system based on the auction model.

The even more interesting scenario brought up is the ability for XM to provide extremely targeted advertising to their subscribers. Since XM Satellite Radio is subscriber-based (yes, SIRIUS is too), they have a large amount of your demographic information.

Associate that information with data about what kind of car you're driving (which can indicate your socioeconomic status), along with GPS data of your location (which can provide geotargeted metrics) and advertisers can provide a highly relavent message directly to a micro-defined segment.

This is all just theoretical of course, but plausable? Absolutely.

It's a great article, definitely worth the read.

[Mediapost]