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XMRadio attacks Canada

XMRadio has added a new channel, Laugh Attack, which showcases Canadian acts. We noticed it for the first time while driving back from Atlanta yesterday. We’ve never heard so many jokes about bears! (Just kidding, eh?)

Whether it’s politics, relationships or the regular travails of daily life, the hunt is on for the big laugh. Laugh Attack puts the comic spotlight on Canada’s rich pool of extraordinary comedic talent such as Mike Bullard, Maggie Cassella, Jeff Fink, Larry Horowitz, Jim Carrey.

So reads the description of the new channel on the XM Comedy page. (As of this writing, the above Laugh Attack link brings one to a blank page. We suspect they’ll be correcting that soonly.)

So far, it’s a pretty tight rotation, artist-wise– lots of Glenn Foster, Jebb Fink, Larry Horowitz, Bruce McCullough, Elvira Kurt, etc., but we suspect that’s only because they’ve only recently begun soliciting recordings from Canadian comics. (And, we suppose, they’re actively engaged in trying to determince which recordings among the audio they’ve already received might actually be from Canadian comics. How does one go about that? Ask, we suppose?)

We seem to recall reading a while back that Canada had essentially barred its citizens and tavern owners from owning satellite radios. After all, the powers that be wouldn’t be able to properly regulate the content! The last we heard, the Canadian government, at the urging of Canadian artists and their labels, passed laws which required Canadian radio stations to devote a hard percentage of their programming to Canadian artists. The theory is that, in so doing, the Canadian artists won’t get drowned in a cultural tsunami of big, bad American artists. The problem with XM and other programmers who are beamed via the birds are that Canadians just over the border (which is about 95 per cent of Canadians) would be able to listen to 200 channels which had no such restrictions! Quelle horreur! We heard that some tavern owners and other regular (outlaw!) citizens were copping XM units anyway! We guess that, after some arm-twisting and other concessions, the folks at XM agreed to block out a few channels for Canadian and French-Canadian programming so that our neighbors to the north can purchase and use their Roady’s with impunity.