Opinion: Hey, politics junkies! XM Radio goes 24 hours at both conventions -- and for free
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Recently, regular Ticket readers will recall, we celebrated the good news for politics junkies that PBS was going to have gavel-to-gavel television coverage of the upcoming Democratic and Republican national conventions.
The networks and even some print media have cut back their coverage drastically.
Well, here’s some even better news. Those politics junkies aware of XM Satellite Radio’s all-politics POTUS 08 Channel 130 have for 10 months now been getting round-the-clock expert reporting on the presidential election races, now focusing on Republican nominee-to-be John McCain and the Democrats’ choice, Barack Obama.
This weekend XM announced that the channel will cover both parties’ national conventions 24 hours a day, commercial-free, with all-day and evening live coverage and overnight reruns of highlights.
This coverage has long been available to millions of XM subscribers in homes, in cars and online. But, XM also announced, during the conventions the satellite radio operation will offer free 14-day trials to online users at www.xmradio.com/potus.
Timed right, those free 14 days will perfectly overlap both the Democrats’ convention in Denver at the end of August and the Republicans’ meeting in St. Paul, Minn., in early September.
XM will have its broadcast booth overlooking both convention floors, with the usual array of anchors on hand, including Joe Mathieu (pictured), Tim Farley, Rebecca Roberts and Scott Walterman. During each week’s session, Adrienne Mitchell will report on the other party from Washington.
The channel is already broadcasting weekly sessions with each convention’s organizers. And it plans to interview speakers, reporters, strategists, delegates and -- who knows -- maybe even some convention attendees wearing funny hats, which won’t look so bad on radio.
By the way, The Ticket will be blogging both conventions in its usual unpredictable way.
-- Andrew Malcolm