The Smiley Smile Message Board

Has anyone heard if SiriusXM is going to bring back their Beach Boys channel this summer?  I kept my car radio locked to it last year and loved hearing tracks that I'd never heard before. I was hoping they would make it a permanent station, but from the looks of things it was apparently a one time deal.    :( :(

Haven't heard yet, either. Was hoping that it could at least be an annual limited time channel, such as the channel for "Carolina Beach Music" that plays later in the summer around Labor Day.

Agreed, this was great fun last year, would love to see it make a return.

 Was just thinking the same thing today. But since Memorial Day weekend is next weekend it would have to be later on in the summer I suppose. I would think it did well for serius but who knows

FWIW, last year, the channel launched the Thursday before Memorial Day Weekend, and was announced only a day or two before that.  So if it's going to happen like last year, we won't know anything until next week.

I hope they do it again too. It made for very enjoyable long-distance drives last summer, and the guest DJ/host spots were great.

I was a little disappointed when I first saw the thread because I thought it was announced...so you can tell I definitely want this back. I learned so much from the channel and it was most of what I listened to during my drives to and from my afternoon/evening shifts.

I was hoping to hear/see something from Al. He was the one who first indicated in early May 2018 that there would be a channel for Beach Boys music around Memorial Day (although I assumed thankfully incorrectly that it would only be on a week or two).

Maybe we should petition or contact Sirius

Didn’t we already try last September? I’m definitely up to try again but I’m pretty sure there was a petition with a ton of signatures.

I wonder how well the station did to warrant a return to it.  Didn't they yank it off air a little earlier than planned last year?  It was fun to have them go gung ho on the deep cuts but I wonder if it scared off the casual listeners.

I called Sirius last year and talked to someone about having a permanent Beach Boys channel. Obviously the band for whatever reasons don’t want it.

That sounds right . Why would you want to put things out like live shows that might get people interested or rarities. 58 years and they still don’t know how to market themselves.

It would be bad decision to get channel permanent. The BBs this time could be right. Tbh, I wish they don't repeat it this year. Besides, I can't even access it, Sirius is U.S. station.

First of all, I don't think there's *any* evidence that the band or BRI "decided" not to make the channel permanent. I'm pretty sure SiriusXM would make that decision, and there's no reason to think BRI would disagree with keeping it permanent.

I can't see any downside to having the channel. I think the channel could have been run better (as I mentioned last year, after asking around and sniffing around, from what I heard SiriusXM turned down active input from outside BB experts, including those who closely have worked with BRI in the past and continue to do so, to help with aspects of the channel and decided to do it all "in-house", hence we got only a small amount of "guest DJ" sort of features, and they were done by people already employed by SiriusXM), and I don't think the channel was a big of a boost to the BB brand as it *could have been* due to the kind of limp management of the channel. But I still don't see any see any particular downside to making the channel permanent, and certainly no apparent downside to doing it again as a "seasonal" channel this year. ESPECIALLY if they were persuaded to let the channel work in some BB experts to help program the channel and do hosting and other gigs on the channel, folks like Boyd, Stebbins, Edelson, etc.

Bummer if you can't access it ouside the US, but I wouldn't advocate against a radio station if it wasn't available in the US. Indeed, we've seen multiple BBC docs related to the BBs that not only *never* aired in the US nor saw official release, but have been continually pulled off YouTube when someone tries to post them.

I had the impression the petitions last year were more about continuing the channel at that point, and/or making the channel permanent. I figured if they were going to make it a seasonal thing for the following summer, we woudln't hear anything until the following year.

I can only imagine the BB channel would have immediately or pretty quickly been made permanent (or extended further) had it seen HUGE numbers for SiriusXM. But I could still envision more "limited" runs like last year.

I don't see any evidence the band or BRI have blocked a continuation of the channel. I mean, we don't know anything for sure. But I don't think there's much of any band, especially a band with such *sparse* representation of radio as it is (e.g. little to no classic rock radio presence, and only a small hand full of songs still surviving on "oldies" radio), that would *not* want their own SiriusXM channel. I would imagine SiriusXM is making decisions based on the "ratings" numbers (as such, to the degree they can measure those numbers).

Also worth mentioning that the impression I got last year was that the SiriusXM thing may have happened through BRI's president Jerry Schilling, as he had done some stuff with SiriusXM in recent years prior to hooking up with the Beach Boys again.

I would guess he worked on doing the BB channel, and I'd guess he was also a big part of brokering the "Town Hall" sort-of-reunion for last year.

So I think BRI has actually actively pursued doing the channel.

I think the guest host spots sat just right in the programming. Just small doses of recognizable people outside the whole historian/scholar sphere playing BB's music which they have a personal connection to and explaining what it is about those specific songs that makes them such fans. And in some cases it was neat to hear some actors who we as fans may not have been aware shared our deep love of the music expressing it, like we could connect with them and in some cases agree with the exact reasons why they were singling out certain songs.

Not at all directed at the sampling of names you list, far from it...but I really don't need to hear a lecture delivered by certain "historians", "scholars", or "experts" given the events of the previous years. No thanks...

The idea behind having folks from the BB camps (e.g. Boyd, Linett, Edelson) would not be a "lecture", it would be simply help/advice in programming the station, and, perhaps, some roundtable discussion bits or other types of things where they would be interviewed. Essentially, variations or extensions on what the in-house SiriusXM people ended up doing on the channel.

Have Stebbins and Edelson spin bits of the hundreds of hours of interviews they have with all the guys over the years, intesrpersed with guest DJ bits. Those guys know how it works; that you can't play five hours straight of "15 Big Ones" and "So Tough" material exclusively. But they could have helped them to avoid playing "Mother May I" seventeen times per day.

Also, just more BRI involvement would be great. It would seem to be the perfect outlet to air some unreleased concerts and things of that nature. The closest we ever got to that was the channel spinning the Oak Ridge Boys 1985 4th of July live collaboration and other stuff from that album.

Certainly, there area a dozen BB experts that could put together a "Top 10" as interesting if not more so than David Fricke.

It got pretty thin at some points on that run last year on the channel. I can't remember who it was, but at one point they had a soundbite from some celebrity (likely in the midst of plugging something else at SiriusXM) whose BB-related anecdote was literally something like "I remember hearing Beach Boys music in the 60s."

I'd definitely be down with Howie doing a guest spot