Sirius XM Channel Merges Now In Effect

The merger of Sirius and XM in becoming Sirius XM now has progressed to the next logical step — merging their channels.

I’ve been thinking for the past few weeks that in order to save money the new company should sooner rather than later stop broadcasting two separate channels of programming for the same genre.  Until yesterday, for example, XM subscribers had “’80s on 8″ while Sirius subscribers had “The Big ’80s.”  Same range of songs and artists, but essentially two different stations.  In fact, there were dozens of such channels with this kind of overlap.  That all ended today.

As of this morning, all channels are identifying themselves as “Sirius XM” rather than just “XM” or “Sirius.”  There is now only one ’80s channel — ’80s on 8.  However, they’ve taken the best from both services’ channels and merged them.  While the new combined station still has the XM morning host, starting at noon the original MTV VJs — Alan Hunter, Mark Goodman, Martha Quinn and Nina Blackwood (God rest J.J. Jackson) who hosted Sirius’ The Big ’80s come on.  Plus they’ll be keeping XM’s rebroadcasts of the original Casey Kasen and Rick Dees Top 40 shows from the ’80s on the weekends.

Here are the channel line-up changes for both XM and Sirius.  They’ve also released a FAQ about the lineup changes, too.  Overall from a consumer standpoint, so far I’m pretty happy with the changes, although I miss having alternative rock stations named Fred, Ethel and Lucy…