The Infinite Dial

After this week's Ross On Radio column comparing the depth on Sirius and XM Satellite Radio's Classic Rock channels, I got the "what about us" e-mail from Music Choice's Justin Prager. It was an fair question. In the days before satellite, Music Choice was an alternaive delivery system that was more informed by radio programming logic than others. As Sirius and XM have mainstreamed, Music Choice has expanded into the Video on Demand arena--where, of course, the radio notion of making every song a smash applies less.

So here's Music Choice Classic Rock at 9:50 p.m. on Wednesday (17). Songs that elude Mediabase's Top 1,000 most played are asterisked:

Jackson Browne, "Running On Empty";
Aerosmith, "Living On The Edge";
* Traffic, "Rock And Roll Stew" -- A one-time AOR staple that is now gone, gone, gone;
Jethro Tull, "Aqualung";
Pretenders, "Brass In Pocket (I'm Special)";
Yes, "Long DIstance Runaround";
* Rush, "Finding My Way"-- From their 1974 debut; sounds like AC/DC in places;
Foreigner, "Double Vision";
* Yardbirds, "Over, Under, Sideways Down";
* John Lennon, "Nobody Told Me" -- Released after his death in 1983, disappeared from the radio almost instantly;
* Ted Nugent, "Love Grenade" -- The only current I encountered in my listening except one of the deep cuts channels;
Bruce Springsteen, "Born To Run";
Rainbow, "Man On The Silver Mountain" -- Their most enduring song at radio.

There are indeed more spikes here than I encountered at Sirius and XM's mainstream Classic Rock channels (although both had deep cuts channels that played nothing but relative obscurities, which Music Choice does not). There's also a lot of that early '70s progressive music that used to be a center lane sound for the format and has selected itself out over the years, particularly at those Classic Rock stations that test both men and women (the latter seem to have less patience for it).