Criticism
As noted above, in March 2009, the emphasis changed dramatically to focus on remixed top-40 music, taking the playlist from the now-defunct Sirius 36 The Beat. Most of the older dance content is now on The Strobe. Immediately afterward, there was major public backlash, notably on the station's Facebook page and other fan pages on the web. Many hardcore dance/club fans were alienated by the music favored by the small minority to whom the channel was trying to appeal. After many months of BPM "crying wolf" about changes coming, on June 16, 2009, the channel's pure dance origins temporarily returned. The station announced that it had expanded the playlist to include the entire channel library from 2001 to the present. Shortly afterward on June 30, 2009, program director Skyy left the company. Management of the station shifted to Mike Abrams (who has been with XM since 2004) and Geronimo, former program director of the defunct pre-acquisition Sirius dance channel, "The Beat", known for its heavy focus on mainstream top-40 remixes and tracks from the 90s and 80s.
On January 15, 2009, "The Beat Morning Show with Geronimo" made its debut. Geronimo was heard on The Beat during its run on Sirius, and the show feature music that was heard on The Beat previous to the combination of the two services. As of June 13, 2009, "The Beat Morning Show" is no longer used on air or listed in the program guide.
Many subscribers had expressed their displeasure with the "Bagatelle Brunch" that aired on Saturday afternoons. An overwhelming number of comments on the station's Facebook fan page have complained that the allegedly live broadcast from a nightclub is poorly mixed, with excessive crowd noise and music that is entirely inappropriate for what is supposed to be a dance station. As of October 12, 2009, BPM dropped the weekday 1pm "Best of Bagatelle Brunch" from the schedule. As of February 5, 2011, due to subscriber backlash, the show has been canceled. The Saturday afternoon 3 hour slot is now hosted by Geronimo.
Read more about this topic: BPM (Sirius XM)
Famous quotes containing the word criticism:
“I consider criticism merely a preliminary excitement, a statement of things a writer has to clear up in his own head sometime or other, probably antecedent to writing; of no value unless it come to fruit in the created work later.”
—Ezra Pound (1885–1972)
“The aim of all commentary on art now should be to make works of art—and, by analogy, our own experience—more, rather than less, real to us. The function of criticism should be to show how it is what it is, even that it is what it is, rather than to show what it means.”
—Susan Sontag (b. 1933)
“The visual is sorely undervalued in modern scholarship. Art history has attained only a fraction of the conceptual sophistication of literary criticism.... Drunk with self-love, criticism has hugely overestimated the centrality of language to western culture. It has failed to see the electrifying sign language of images.”
—Camille Paglia (b. 1947)