I grew up on AM radio (outside it's 77 W-A-B-C-Degrees); my Ipod has most songs at 64 kbps so I can cram more of them on there (8000+ at the moment). Obviously sound quality is not a huge issue for me.
While I completely concur that 70s on 7 and 80s on 8, channels I used to listen to a lot, have gone in the toilet since the merger (70s due to repetition, 80s due to VJs without video), I will not drop my XM because of the spoken word channels (NPR, CNN, MSNBC, POTUS, comedy), which are > 90% of my radio listening in the car (and something terrestrial radio can't provide).