Well just when you thought the new channels were done coming…well think again. XM announced today that the XM Nation will be expanded to 170 channels sometime between now and summer. There will also be some channel renaming as well. The new channel lineup will be as follows:

Channels that are being renamed:

XM 32 The Fish will now be called The Message

XM 52 Unsigned will now be called The Verge

XM 90 Alegria will now be called Fuego

XM 165 Ask will now be called Talk Radio

XM 172 Franc Parler will now be called SportPlus (Broadcast in French)

The Addtional Channels will be named as follows:

U.S. Country - XM 17 - Country Superstars of the 80s and 90s

Flight 26 - XM 26 - Modern Hits 90s & Now

XM Hitlist - XM 30 - Today’s Hit Music

enLighten - XM 34 - Southern Gospel

XM Liquid Metal - XM 42 - Heavy Metal XL

The Heat - XM 68 - Rhythmic Hits

Escape - XM 78 - Easy Listening

Viva - XM 91 - Latin Pop Hits

Also to be added later as well are Regional talk radio channels which will be as follows:

XM 134 - Northeast News & Talk
XM 135 - Southeast News & Talk
XM 136 - Middle America News & Talk
XM 137 - Midwest News & Talk
XM 138 - Northwest News & Talk
XM 139 - Southwest News & Talk

Wow !!!! its definitely a mixed bag of stuff here. I think there’s alot to be excited here and a few things that are leaving me scracthing my head, but then again we don’t know all the details on what these channels will really be like, so we’ll have to see what happens but the bottomline is XM is expanding their lineup which shows growth and is an extremely positive thing no matter how you slice it