SiriusXM 40s on 4 listeners furious Billy Joel replaces channel
While I’m on the road driving I like to listen to SiriusXM 40s on 4, 60s on 6 and 80s on 8. I love 60s and 80s music but also think there were a lot of duds. 40s is usually consistently good. The only time I didn’t like 40s on 4 was when Jonathan Schwartz played Carly Simon or some other artist clearly not from the 40s era. That is akin to justifying playing Pitball or Shakira singing Johnny Mercer on a 40s channel.
Last week I wanted to listen to 80s New Wave or 60s Motown but there was nothing so I put it on my old standby 40s on 4 and heard Billy Joel!!!!! SiriusXM suspended 40s on 4 for 24/7 Billy Joel until June 26, 2014 expecting 40s on 4 listeners to not complain for 3 months. They most likely expected 40s on 4 listeners dying in hospitals unable to lift a phone or too old to know how to access social media.
40s on 4 listeners posting daily of their complaints has basically hijacked the SiriusXM Facebook page. There are now recognizable names posting but each day brings a new “shocked” poster asking what happened to 40s on 4. Many have complained by phone to cancel and regret their car purchases. Others have used twitter, post on Billy Joel and other SiriusXM pages, and even attempted to contact SiriusXM Chief Content Officer Scott Greenstein. The latest today is to contact the New York Better and Business Bureau, The Federal Communications Commission, and Liberty Media Communications which owns SiriusXM.
A lot of the 40s on 4 listeners are turning out to be younger than Billy Joel who will turn 65 this May. Many are Billy Joel fans themselves however they don’t want to listen to him 24/7 and his music is not 1940s nor is it similar. They are not asking to cancel Billy Joel but only to move him to another channel or to move 40s on 4 to another channel.
The “temporary” suspension coincides with Doris Day’s birthday celebration in Carmel on April 3. SiriusXM lost an opportunity to celebrate her birthday through songs and interviews. It could have gathered media folk from other SiriusXM channels like Howard Stern, Bruce Springsteen, Ozzy Osbourne, and Pearl Jam to interview and wish Doris Day a Happy Birthday through words and song. Below is a video of Tony Bennett,Olivia Newton-John, Ringo Star, Fran Drescher, Geraldo and many more wishing her a Happy Birthday.
Today was also the loss of Mickey Rooney, a star of many MGM musicals with Judy Garland. Another SiriusXM opportunity lost to celebrate a man whose name is recognizable from children to centenarians. His career spanned from the 20s to the present covering 10 decades although he will be most fondly remembered for the Andy Hardy series from the 30s and 40s.
The saga of SiriusXM 40s on 4 continues. The listeners have set up a deadline of April 10.th If there is no response by then from SiriusXM, they plan a mass exodus of cancellations.
Here is an online petition to save 40s on 4