BREAKING NEWS: Lou Ruggieri says goodbye to TCGS

Boy, talk about springing it on us. Lino just announced on the air that Lou has tendered his resignation from Sirius/XM, effective the day after tomorrow (April 28th), effectively making today's show his last. The reason? He's going back to school after much prayerful consideration.

Wow. We're just speechless.

Thinking about it, though, the way he's leaving is classic Lou: quietly, with no fuss and lots of memories. We'll leave others to write long oratories about Lou's 4+ years on TCGS, but as for us, our message to Lou is this:

Good luck and Godspeed, Lou. You'll be missed.

BREAKING NEWS: The Catholic Channel moves to Channel 129 on both Sirius and XM starting May 4

Not to toot our own horn too loudly, but we definitely called this one. You'll recall that our last post predicted that The Catholic Channel would be moving away from its longtime homes of Sirius 159 and XM 117 in the very near future in order to align channel numbers on both services.

Well, now that move has been officially confirmed by Sirius/XM. Starting on Wednesday, May 4th, The Catholic Channel will be moving to Channel 129 on both Sirius and XM. So get your presets ready, and get used to hearing "The Catholic Channel, Sirius/XM 129". Sounds a little weird, doesn't it?

Say goodbye to Sirius 159 and XM 117

Now before you start panicking, we're not insinuating that The Catholic Channel is going the way of the dodo bird. Or that we're saying goodbye to listening to the channel (although we're sure that some of you out there were thinking/hoping that.) But our choice of words must have piqued your interest, or you still wouldn't be reading this.

Here's the scoop: from the bits and pieces of evidence that we've been able to gather, it looks like Sirius/XM is getting ready to rearrange its channel lineup, perhaps with the goal of synchronizing the channel numbers on both Sirius and XM radios. That means that The Catholic Channel, which has been on Sirius 159 since Day One and on XM 117 since its debut there, is getting a new unified channel number... likely sometime within the next few weeks.

How are we deducing this? Well, we knew something was up when our favorite morning show host, Gus Lloyd, recently stopped using the channel numbers when identifying the channel on Seize The Day... he now says you're listening to The Catholic Channel on "Sirius/XM Satellite Radio" rather than "XM 117 and Sirius 159". The purpose? Likely to begin disassociating the channel with its current numbers, and to make it easier to use these shows as "best-of" material further down the line. We noticed the same phrasing at the end of the Sunday Mass broadcast yesterday... no more channel number, just "Sirius/XM, The Catholic Channel".

Curious as we were, we did a little Googling and found two threads on Sirius and XM fan forums (here and here) that seem to indicate that an imminent channel lineup shakeup/consolidation is coming as early as April 20th. In fact the first post on one of those threads indicated that Family Talk (the evangelical-focused of the three religious channels on Sirius/XM) is slated to move to Channel 131 on both services starting on the 20th (UPDATE: the most recent post on that forum from the same user now cites sometime in "Early May").

In all honesty we haven't been able to listen to Lino for most of the past week, but of the little that we have heard we haven't heard anything out of the ordinary. (Then again, maybe we missed something.) So take all of this with a grain of salt, but it looks like Lino and the rest of The Catholic Channel will be moving sometime in the not-so-distant future. Get your presets ready!