While listening to “Wilie’s Place” on SiriusXM this morning the radio host invited listeners to email in with suggestions, requests, comments, and such. The email address is Williesplace@SiriusXM.com. Those who know me know better than to ask a question to which they don’t want an honest answer. With that in mind I composed an email and sent it along. For the reading entertainment of my vast audience, I’m including the entire email here as a post. If I get any sort of reply from whoever runs the channel, I’ll post that as a follow up.
Subject: Your Programming
Needs substantial improvement. It’s gone way down hill since the merger and the more recent financial problems.
MORE: Ernest Tubb, Hank Williams Sr., Lefty Frizell, Marty Robbins, Red Steagall, Bob Wills, Patsy Cline, Leona Williams, Amber Digby, Hank Thompson, Hank Snow, Cal Smith, Carl Smith, Loretta Lynn, Justin Trevino, Darrel and Mona McCall, Connie Smith, Johnny Cash, Johnny Seay, Eddy Arnold, Jim Reeves, Rhonda Vincent, Jerry Reed, and maybe even some Roy Orbison. Charley Pride seems to have vanished, so bring him back too. Bobby Bare also.
LESS: Jerry Jeff Walker and Leon Russell. In fact no Leon Russell would be good. I know he’s a great studio musician and friend of Willie’s, but his singing makes Ernest Tubb sound like Jim Reeves. I’ve tired of hearing him mangle classic songs. Less Dallas Wayne and Bill Mack, too. Much less filling air time with covers of classic songs by little known singers.
LESS: Chatter. The reason a lot of people were attracted to Sirius and XM is that there wasn’t a lot of DJ babble. We don’t need the hosts to tell us who is singing what because satellite radio has this really cool display that tells us what is on. Talk less, play more music.
LESS: Bill Mack. Who hasn’t seemed to figure out that he’s not on AM or FM broadcast any longer. Play more music, talk much, much, less.
LESS: Advertisements. I know you don’t call them that, but when the hosts are talking about the latest concert coming up at “Willies Place” and how we can get tickets, that’s an advertisement. Most listeners can’t go and probably aren’t interested in hearing about the concerts unless you’re doing live shows over SiriusXM.
Clarence has about the best mix on the channel. Little chatter, mostly good music.
While we’re at it, bring back Eddie Kilroy. At least his chatter was amusing most of the time.
Go back to playing good music, and lot’s of it, and you’ll not only stop losing subscribers, but you might even get some of the ones that pulled the plug on satellite radio to come back.
Thanks,
Too Old To Work, Too Young To Retire
EXCELLENT letter. I love Jerry Jeff, but he belongs more on Outlaw Country. And I’d really like to see less overlap in the programming, not just with the country channels but the rock ones too.
That’s a good point, one which I didn’t raise. I know that Willie and many of his featured friends are “Outlaws”, but there is a channel for that. If he wants to run that channel, then he should and let us have our classic country channel back.
Yep. They bill WP as a honky-tonk channel, so they oughta play more honky-tonk music and leave the Outlaws on Outlaw Country. Speaking of classic country, though, I really do like the Roadhouse.
I like the Roadhouse more than I used to, but it suffers from a similar problem. There is a lot of what WP used to play, but some stuff that is marginally CW, at best. I find myself flipping back and forth between the two far more than I used to. Up until a few months ago, I was more or less sitting on WP unless they were playing one of the Christian programs, in which case I was over at Roadhouse or it’s previous incarnation.
One of the reasons I don’t subscribe… 🙂
It used to be much, much, better, especially compared to the crapola on AM and FM around here. Just TRY to find a good CW station in New England. 🙁
[…] fact they’ve done almost exactly what I suggested in a post about two years […]