About half the stations have ads, but for now they are very short like 1 minute or less. I imagine if they get a bigger base of listeners they will get more ads, but the thing is its so easy to change channels that I doubt they will ever generate much in the way of ads. As for the variety they have everything. They have three stations of sports talk, including ESPN and Sporting News, they have about every NASCAR race on, their music stations are almost all just themes without DJs, as they only have one regular radio station as we think of them. The rest are just things such as 70s or Indie Rock, things like that. For a subject like jazz they have 5 varieties. I think many people have seen what they offer on digital cable, its a similar idea mostly, except more variety. I will tell you this, at first it seems stupid paying for radio, but once you get it you are hooked and you can't imagine life without it. Think of how most broadcast stations are, they might play a song you love followed by a song you hate, all because they have to be very generalized. These stations follow one specific genre of music. Its very similar to TV, the networks have to show a bit of everything while cable stations often stick to one them such as sports or news or movies. Think back to the early 80s, I remember many people (including my old man) who said "who the hell is going to pay to watch more TV channels?" Well same thing here.