XM Nation

I can't listen to regular radio anymore. Two-plus years of subscribing to XM Satellite Radio has spoiled me. It took a little while for it to grow on me, but I'm addicted to it now. I've found out how addicted in the last few weeks. Due to a subscription snafu, I've been without my XM for a while. The drives to and from work never took so long.

I guess I initially got interested in XM for the music -- non-stop, no commercials and lots of obscure stuff that Clear Channel won't let on the air, which means nobody ever hears it because Clear Channel has taken over every terrestrial station known to man and programmed them all with the exact same playlist. But XM's other stuff grew on me. Sports -- lots of sports -- talk, comedy. And perhaps best of all, there are 24-7 traffic reports for the nation's largest metropolitan areas -- a feature I'm not sure I totally appreciated until this week.

As I was sitting in traffic on I-95 a few days ago, creeping along trying to get to work, taking an hour to make a trip that should last 25 minutes, I finally broke down and put on the radio -- the regular radio -- to see if I could get a traffic report. I put on old reliable 1500-AM, which used to be WTOP, Washington's main news station. The Washington Post purchased it not long ago and now it's Washington Post Radio. And despite the fact that it serves one of the most intensely congested areas in the country, the new management apparently decided that traffic reports were expendable.

I listened for more than half an hour. No traffic. This from a station that used to break every 10 minutes for "traffic and weather together on the 8's." Even in the middle of 9-11. I know because my office didn't have a TV at the time, so we had to listen to the defining news event of our time on the radio. Welcome to the 21st Century. The world was coming apart at the seams, but WTOP was still taking time every 10 minutes to tell people that the inner loop of the Beltway was slow from St. Barnabas Road to the Wilson Bridge. Stop the presses!