When I first got satellite radio...

...about five years ago, I thought it was just about the best product I'd ever bought. Seriously. XM Radio had excellent music (some of it really obscure), no commercials and almost no talk -- it was great!

And then ... Sirius merged with XM.

The first thing to go was the quality of the music -- still good, but not great. I could live with that.

But then came the most inexplicable development of all. Someone, for some unknown reason, decided that what was missing from satellite radio was chatter. So, gradually, one by one, the stations hired DJs to talk between songs. About nothing. Just talk -- like they do on terrestrial radio. You know, what you can't stand about radio.

And so the experience for me has diminished further. What's next, Sirius XM, commercials?