Beating Over-the-Air, But Not Quite Perfect

Of course, Sirius also can claim the sui generis Howard Stern, who probably will be good for 1 million new subscribers on his own after he joins Sirius in January.

By way of disclosure, I have had XM in two successive vehicles since December 2001. Before this comparison, my exposure to Sirius was limited at best, confined largely to rental cars that featured the service. Sirius sent me a loaner boom box in early June and I spent a large part of the month -- consecutive days and otherwise, dropping in at various times of days and late nights, on weekends and weekdays, well over 100 hours -- sampling the service.

In comparing XM and Sirius, I judged two factors: programming and reception.

With the benefit of a year's head start, XM has the better music stations. Each channel has what is known in the business as "stationality": a personality that makes it instantly clear to listeners which channel they are listening to. XM achieves this with a tight but deep selection of music for each channel, custom jingles featuring each station's name and, on a few channels, and sound effects that create radio's "theater of the mind." "Hank's Place," XM's classic country station, sounds like you've stepped into a honky-tonk, right down to the coin dropping into the Rock-Ola.

The allure of satellite radio is its plethora of narrowly formatted stations with little overlap between them. When you want classic alternative such as the Clash, the Smiths and Joy Division, you go to XM channel 44, which is called "Fred." One rarely if ever hears those artists on other XM channels.

By contrast, many of Sirius's channels sound like they're dipping into the same playlist. Flipping back and forth for several hours among Sirius channels "Starlite," "Sirius Love," "Movin' Easy" and "The Bridge" proved one channel indistinguishable from the others. Same with the four heavy-metal channels. If there are subtle distinctions, they evaded me.

While listening to Sirius in a rental car in May, I heard two Sirius channels commit what is, for me, an unforgivable sin for satellite radio: playing the same song at the same time. (Worse still: It was America's "Sister Golden Hair.") This I can get from hoary FM.

Sirius does have some outstanding personalities. I don't know from show tunes but found myself listening to "Broadway's Best" one night for two hours because of the hilarious host, Seth Rudetsky, a Broadway pianist and winner of a Funniest Gay Male contest. Sirius's celebrity deejays include Eminem, who helped program a hip-hop channel, and superstar skateboarder Tony Hawk. (More dudes per hour than any other radio show, guaranteed.) XM counters with Tom Petty and Snoop Dogg.

Fairly, it should be noted that I listened to Sirius at its weakest time of the year in terms of its sports programming. A huge part of Sirius's allure is its carriage of the NFL, NBA and NHL, none of which was currently playing. Sirius in November to January -- when all three leagues are in season -- must be nirvana for sports fans.

As for service, each relies on a different set of satellites. Sirius's three spacecraft ride a set of looping orbits that bring one at a time across the United States, while XM's two spacecraft sit in a more distant orbit that keeps them in fixed spots over the country.

Here's the problem: Satellite signals, unlike sturdier AM and FM signals, travel like sunlight and can't pass through obstructions such as buildings or dense foliage.

Sirius says the changing paths of its satellites minimize the areas shadowed by any ground-bound obstacles. XM compensates for its dead zones with hundreds of land-based repeaters that pick up the satellite signals and beam them around larger cities.

In places such as Washington, XM service is nearly flawless. In smaller cities such as Charleston, which has fewer repeaters, you get dropouts when driving along a southern ridgeline and between buildings downtown. Sirius's service in those spots is better but still has hiccups. Also, because Sirius's satellites move, I had to relocate the Sirius antenna from one window to another to find the signal over several hours of listening one afternoon.

As AM and FM convert to digital broadcasts and add additional channels to their signals, over-the-air radio probably will offer new competition for satellite. Digital radio will also allow AM and FM to go beyond their current limited ability to broadcast such text info as a station's call letters or the title and artist of the current track. (XM's baseball channels, for example, not only display the score but the situation -- "BOT 8TH 1 OUT" for bottom of the eighth inning and one out -- to bring listeners instantly up to date when they tune in.)

But local terrestrial radio stations will never be able to duplicate the wide variety of music, sports and talk choices and national reach of XM and Sirius, making both satellite radio services, even with the occasional signal glitches and sometimes-inconsistent quality of programming, far superior to their over-the-air cousins.