Going On to XM on Monday

"The Michelangelo Signorile Show" and all of the shows on OutQ will begin airing on XM this Monday, February 2, in addition to Sirius. OutQ will air on Sirius 109 and on XM 98. Combined, we will be available to more than 19 million satellite radio subscribers.

For those who are confused: Though the two satellite radio companies merged last fall and became Sirius XM, they have remained as two separate services. Each service will continue to offer distinct channels as well as some channels which will air on both services.

OutQ, I'm happy to say, will be one of those channels aired on both services, as part of basic service, which means XM subscribers will not pay any extra charge to receive it.

So, what does this mean? When I began at Sirius Satellite Radio five years ago we had 30,000 subscribers. It's been quite an experience to see that grow to 8.3 million subscribers as of January 4, 2009. But on Monday, airing on XM in addition to Sirius, we will go to more than double that number of subscribers, to more than 19 million subscribers.

On Today's Show

Seven days left --- seven more days of nasty, vicious smears -- and we just can't wait for it to be over.

More infighting in the McCain campaign: Palin now being called a "whack job."

How will Senator Ted Stevens convictions on 7 counts help to bring it all down for the Republicans?

The white supremacist plot to kill Barack Obama: How much responsibility does the McCain campaign have to this and to speak out against it? And isn't this the kind of domestic terrorism we should be talking about rather than, as McCain calls him, the old washed up terrorist from the 60s?

Antigay leader Janet Porter (formerly Folger): You cannot be a Christian and vote for Obama.

And in the 4:30 ET hour: Bob Edwards, the legendary radio veteran who hosted National Public Radio's Morning edition for 25 years. Now on XM, channel 133 and Sirius Channel 196. We'll get his take on the election and the antigay ballot measures in three states.

Sally and Me

Well, the Republican drag worked! I ran into wacko theocrat Oklahoma state lawmaker Sally Kern over at the Oklahoma delegation, and she didn't realize it was me, even though I introduced myself by name. She even mentioned at the end of our interview, while I took a picture with her, that she had a bad experience on Sirius, with "whatshisname, Michael Siganorelli or something like that." Wait until you hear the interview. I'll post some of it too, and I'm definitely posting the Roberta McCain audio -- we've got to get that far and wide!

Mike Gallagher, Dennis Prager and Me

We are now inside the Pepsi Center at the Democratic National Convention (a pic here of producer David Guggenheim in front of our set-up), prepping for the show and setting up (we'll be live, our regular time: 2-6 PM EST). We are on Talk Show Row, between CBS Radio and Salem Broadcasting, the far right conservative syndicate, and who was there on air when we came to set up literally three feet away: Conservative talkerMike Gallagher. He was like, "oh, it's Michelangelo Signorile." The next thing I know, I'm sitting on his show, disagreeing about just about everything politically, but agreeing on a few things. Basically, he was feeling as much of of a outsider as we're going to feel at the Republican convention next week.

He was finishing out his hour, and then the next host came in: Dennis Prager, who I tussled with when we had him on our show a couple of years ago. He doesn't yet know that it's me sitting next to him. (Our signs for the show haven't arrived yet from DC). This is going to be an interesting few days.

I'll fill you with more as we go. Lots to talk about in the opening of the show. What does the Biden pick mean? What do you think about it? Will it help Obama? What about the Hillary supporters, which include many of you? What are you feeling? What about McCain using Hillary in ads? Discuss here of course, but call the show and jump in as well.

That Tornado Thing

Those of you who listen to the show heard me talking late in the last hour about a tornado warning -- not a watch, but a warning -- for Manhattan at that moment. And there we were, 36 stories up in a glass studio, in a glass tower, looking out over the city and at the ominous clouds. CNN was in usual hyper-weather-warning mode about the whole thing, and it was hard not to get caught up in it.

And what's odd and eerie about Sirius and the studios is that we have every available news source coming into the studio -- TV, Internet, radio -- but we are obviously soundproofed from the rest of the building, so we couldn't hear any warning in the building even if there was one, and we're on generators, so even if electricity goes out, the studios keep going. I remember the blackout a few years ago, when we were on the air -- was our first year of the show -- and no one told us there was a blackout, nor came to tell us to leave. The show must go on! They were evacuating the building, but we had no idea. Of course, there was a slight dip in the power before the generators went on, and we saw it on TV, but we had no awareness of our 50-story building and hundreds of other buildings all around us emptying into the streets, nor did we think anyone would ever tell us.

So, when the tornado warning came I wondered if there was stuff going on that we didn't know about -- as it turns out, people in the building were notified -- and it was great to actually have listeners calling up from Texas and Kentucky and elsewhere along tornado alley, giving us tips on what to do. I was a typical New Yorker about the whole thing, thinking we were safe high up since "a tornado can't affect us here." Callers quickly let me know that tornadoes come from above and could slice through the building like a machete in a Kansas wheat field. Oh, well. The whole thing passed relatively quickly -- some severe thunderstorms, that's all.