Are you a Howard Stern kind of person (half-naked women on the shock jock's Web site last week) or a Bob Edwards type (avuncular former NPR host)? Football or baseball? NHL or NASCAR?
This is the first time I've gone shopping for an electronic object and discovered I had to give myself and other members of my listening household a personality test. If you're thinking of buying a satellite radio, that's what you have to do.
Actually, that's good news. When satellite radios first came out, you had to buy an entire car to go with them because they were sold as part of a high-priced automotive package.
Now there's much more choice, with radios that can move from car to house, or move with you from place to place. Even so, buying one is still more than a matter of price, model and quality. First you have to figure out which system you want to listen to -- Sirius or XM -- and only then can you evaluate which of their radios you want to buy.
The technology-challenged will find shopping for a satellite radio scary. (They come with remotes.) The indecisive will quail. (Each has more than 100 channels.) The budget-conscious will flinch. (What, spend $12.95 a month to subscribe to radio when you can listen for free?) We should have known. Once we started paying for television and letting hundreds of channels into our houses, what kind of message were we sending to radio? One message, loud and clear: more.
So I can't really blame satellite radio for burdening us with choices, and I suppose I can't single it out for forcing me to sort out my politics and preferences either.
Lissa Coffey, a California sociologist, reminds me that we express our attitudes and opinions with most of our purchases. "Buying a hybrid car, for example, tells the world that you're concerned about the environment, that you're forward-thinking," she said. "It's a statement."
Scarborough Research, which studies shopping patterns, can follow your radio-listening habits and link it to buying behavior. In February, the company reported on a study of urban radio listeners: 15 percent of gospel music listeners spend more than $100 on athletic shoes, as do 22 percent of urban oldies listeners; and 10 percent of rhythmic contemporary hit listeners spend $15 or more on a bottle of wine vs. 4 percent of contemporary inspirational listeners.
So we are what we listen to.
Trying to find out more about myself, I talked to salespeople at Radio Shack, Circuit City and Best Buy, asking for advice about what I should look for in a radio.
