UPDATE - AAR Premium Podcasts

In an earlier post, I requested a copy, if anyone still had one, of the AAR e-mail from a few months back introducing the Premium subscriber service. I was seeking the one which used commercial-free podcasts as a selling point for AAR Premium.

Last Friday, my podcast of "The Majority Report" appeared to be an unedited recording of the AAR program stream from XM Radio. It contained full breaks, including commercials, PSAs and XM station promos. This morning, when I downloaded Friday's edition of "The Randi Rhodes Show," it was the same thing.

This was the first time since I became a Premium subscriber that I had heard commercials on the podcasts, with the exceptions of a few times that a break or two had slipped through. That was bad enough, considering the $70 membership fee, but this time, it seemed to be by design rather than by accident. I was furious. My intention was to build my argument around the fact that, if this was the new practice, it amounted to nothing less than a bait-and-switch.

I spent the morning getting sent to various voicemail inboxes at AAR headquarters in New York.

Finally, I heard back from Russ Gilbert, Vice-President of AAR Interactive. He told me that my complaint was the first he had heard of podcasts containing commercials last Friday. He assured me that this was a "glitch" rather than a change in policy. He said that AAR runs two recordings for its podcasting operation. One is straight from the source. The other is a backup from the XM program stream. He did not know the details as to why the XM streams were uploaded on Friday, but he said the most likely reason was that the source recording had a problem and they went with the backup. Still, he said, the commercials should have been edited out and he intended to find out why they weren't.

And, for what it is worth, this morning's podcast of "The Rachel Maddow Show" was commercial-free as usual. I will withhold final judgment until I hear how the rest of the day's programs turn out, but the problem appears to have been solved.

UPDATE II

I notice also that the offending episodes of "The Majority Report" and "The Randi Rhodes Show" have been updated with commercial-free versions of Friday's programs. Thanks to Mr. Gilbert for his prompt attention to this matter.