Politics 24/7: No One Can Hear You Scream

But the economics of the new model are uncertain. Narrow niches mean small audiences, which mean ad revenues that won't knock anyone's socks off. And goodness knows, nobody pays for content anymore. At a certain point, the niche becomes so narrow that it cannot sustain content of any value.

XM is cobbling together POTUS with a sprinkle of magic and a thimbleful of hope. There are no ads on the channel; it's just one more stream of content designed to lure people into paying a monthly fee for lots and lots of radio choices. So POTUS won't be hiring its own fleet of reporters to go out and get the news. That's way too old school.

Instead, POTUS has four radio pros, anchors who interview anyone who has ever written a book about presidential politics. (Believe me, I have heard them all in 24 hours. The guy who wrote about black Republicans. The guy who wrote about what it's like to be vice president. The guy who wrote about the electoral college.)

Aren't there any Viagra ads they could play?

Wait, there's news. Heavens to Betsy, the end of the third quarter fundraising period is nigh!

Call in the experts, collar the consultants. What does it mean? What will the campaign finance reports say? Tell us now, because we cannot wait for the actual reports to come out tomorrow.

Don't get me wrong: There's cool stuff on POTUS. The program directors of XM's music channels deliver snippets of political songs from different pop eras. The trivia bits are okay, though I'm not certain my life is wholly enriched now that I know that six presidents were left-handed. Some interviews do add value; a marketing executive from Miami plays Obama ads running in three states and explains how the candidate plays to different audiences.

Then I realize I am listening to the same interview with Duncan Hunter -- yes, a man named Duncan Hunter is running for president -- for the fourth time in nine hours. And I still don't know who he is. (Answer: longtime Republican congressman from California; pro-defense and anti-immigration hardliner.)

POTUS's program hosts know how to stretch an interview -- Scott Walterman's morning show has a newsy feel, and Rebecca Roberts's PM drive show takes its tone from public radio -- but 400 days out, even in this overhyped, wildly accelerated political season, there just isn't that much to say.

"The sound of candidates is competing with the crickets," Roberts says as she and co-anchor Tim Farley try to fill a half-hour of post-debate punditry after a GOP debate to which none of the major contenders show up. "But that doesn't mean there isn't a lot to talk about."

So she talks and talks -- about how "there really aren't a lot of reporters here," and about how "blogging, I think, is an interesting medium," and about how "Ron Paul on a big screen is not as impressive as when you read about him on a blog."

When XM's talkers run out of gas, many more folks are ready to start jawing. Every media organization desperate to break out of its niche and reach into a new medium is only too happy to cough up its own "Gabfest" (as Slate.com's show on POTUS is called) or "Politics Program" (The Post's entry) or "On Air" show (National Journal).

In the future, maybe everyone will have his own TV or radio talk show -- or his own personal presidential politics pundit, someone who will come to your house and yammer at you about whether Hillary has wrapped it up.

POTUS is a rare expansion of news programming on radio, where rampant cost-cutting has largely dismantled commercial radio's news-gathering capacity, leaving public radio with a near-monopoly on news. On the XM and Sirius satellite services, the news channels are mainly mere retransmissions of the audio from various TV networks.

So all hail the idea behind POTUS. But beware of pundit overload. After all, XM still doesn't employ an actual reporter. Above all else, a warning: When tuning in to POTUS, take frequent breaks. Listening for extended periods can be hazardous to your commitment to democracy.