Adventures in (Non-)Communication with Sirius OutQ and MSNBC

For a business allegedly based in communication, SiriusXM OutQ doesn’t seem to be all that communicative. At least the guy allegedly in charge of their programming, Dave Gorab, isn’t.


For the last six weeks at least, I’ve been calling Gorab’s office – SiriusXM’s main office switchboard is at 212-584-5100; try it yourself sometime – and leaving voicemail messages asking why, if OutQ plugs itself as being “America’s GLBT Radio Station,” it has never had any Bisexual or Transgendered program hosts in its years of operation? The only program hosts they’ve ever had have all been either Gay men or Lesbian women.

Gorab hasn’t returned any of the calls. I’ve recently added calls to Jeremy Coleman, Gorab’s immediate superior in the SiriusXM brass; he hasn’t returned any calls, either, but it’s only been two from me thus far to him. If you’d like to know what gives, I suggest – plead, even – that you give them a holler yourself.

In addition to the channel’s half-fulfilled claim, none of OutQ’s current programming originates in full from the West Coast on a regular basis (The Frank DeCaro Show is split between DeCaro in New York and supporting mouth Doria Bittle in L.A.), even though other SiriusXM talk programming has and does. (Repeats of the weekday programming start at the ridiculously early hour of 7:00 P.M. Pacific Time, with DeCaro.) One of OutQ’s original programs, Harrison On The Edge, originated from Los Angeles for its relatively brief tenure on the schedule; Mojo Nixon’s programs have all originated from the San Diego suburb of Coronado, California; and one entire channel, Playboy Radio, is headquartered on Hugh Hefner’s estate in Holmby Hills, California, the Los Angeles suburb.

Strangely enough, Playboy Radio has employed more Bisexuals on its daily air staff – Juli Ashton, Tiffany Granath, Ginger Lynn Allen, Christy Canyon, Andrea Lowell, Kylie Ireland – than OutQ ever has on its entire, air and office, staff. (And we have the photographic evidence to establish the point regarding madams Ashton, Allen, Canyon, et. Al. It’s not exactly difficult to find.) Hell, when Playboy Radio first cranked itself up, its entire air staff was Ashton and Granath doing a radio version of their popular Night Calls TV program (Canyon and Nicki Hunter are that program’s current radio hosts).

Oh, and on a somewhat related note, Bill Wolff, executive producer of Rachel Maddow’s MSNBC program, is scheduled to be at a meet-up in Tucson tonight. I’ll ask him why MSNBC keeps having the Biphobe extraordinaire Dan Savage as a guest on the Olbermann and Maddow shows (See the 29 May 2010 note on this blog, below); Brother Wolff’s answer, if any, will be posted here in the next few days. Should you not want to wait, Rachel and Keith’s production offices are reachable through 212-664-4444, the main switchboard for NBC in New York and the network’s owned-and-operated TV station there, WNBC-TV Channel 4 (hence all those 4s in the phone number; NBC's original radio station in New York was at 660 kHz on the AM dial, hence that "66" at the beginning). Have fun there too, folks.