SIRIUS Left
 | |
| Broadcast area |
United States Canada |
|---|---|
| Format | Progressive talk radio |
| Class | Satellite Radio Station |
| Owner | Sirius XM Radio |
| Website | www.sirius.com/siriusleft |
SIRIUS Left was Sirius Satellite Radio's liberal talk channel. It featured personalities such as Lynn Samuels, Bill Press, Alex Bennett, Mike Malloy, Ed Schultz, Thom Hartmann and newcomer Mark Thompson. It was also one of the Sirius XM-owned channels to be exclusive to Sirius and not heard on XM (along with SIRIUS Hits 1.) In June 2008, Sirius Canada added Sirius Left to its lineup (along with the now-defunct Hot Jamz).
After the Sirius XM merger, the co-owned America Left on XM Satellite Radio did not join the Sirius lineup on November 12, 2008. Likewise, SIRIUS Left did not join the XM lineup. Instead, both channels were added to the online streaming services, and were accessible to online subscribers of both services including the iPhone and BlackBerry apps. The two channels merged to become Sirius XM Left May 4, 2011. Alex Bennett and Mark Thompson can still be heard on Sirius XM Left. Lynn Samuels has moved to Sirius-XM Stars 107. Her show airs live every Saturday and Sunday from 10am-1pm.
Political analyst Andy Ostroy has criticized Sirius Left and liberal talk radio in general in the Huffington Post. Ostroy disliked Sirius Left's three in-house hosts Alex Bennett, Lynn Samuels, and Mark Thompson. Bennett was described as "an ungracefully-aging hippie himself, [who] offers up more gratuitous profanity than intellectual political thought"; Samuels on "any random listen could be whining about anything meaningless"; while Thompson, although "a smart, passionate guy, has a program so mellow in tone that it can literally put you to sleep. His voice is so smooth and jazzy that he'd be much better off cuing up a Miles Davis album." Ostroy said that Sirius Left should have more "ass-kickers" on the network, like Ed Schultz, Randi Rhodes and Stephanie Miller.[1]
References
- ↑ Why is Liberal Radio So Inept? - published by The Huffington Post website on September 21, 2008