Wednesday, February 21, 2007

XM and Sirius Merge

I received an email last night telling me something that the Thunderstick and I had long suspected would happen: XM and Sirus are merging, assuming the FCC approves. As a huge fan of satellite radio, I naturally worry what this will do to the consumer -- will I have to buy new equipment? Will my subscriber fees go up? At the same time, I cannot help but be pleased with what will inevitably be expanded options -- I will now get all NFL games in addition to the MLB package, wonderful news inasmuch as I will be able to listen to all the Pats games and listen when, say, I am driving back from San Antonio on a Sunday afternoon. The FCC will have some serious anti-trust questions to address, and the technological issues might be more difficult to reconcile than the principals think, but as one of the major players in the deal argued yesterday, the idea of only one satellite station may have been inevitable anyway. At least with this merger, one of them won't collapse.

4 comments:

AtriaBooks said...

This is great! Before hand it was analogous to if there were two internets. ESPN.com was available on one and Yahoo was available on the other.

dcat said...

That's a good analogy. I'm not an advocate of monopoly capitalism by any stretch of the imagination, but at the same time, if our options are no satellite stations, or one burying the other one, that is less good for consumers. This merger seems to represent a concession to realities.
As the Thunderstick told me yesterday, in a world where we can all listen to iPods and we have a million other music options, this new superstation still cannot overplay their hand. Make equipment or subscription costs prohibitive and you'll lose people who recognize that satellite radio is a luxury and who will just get a car hookup for their ipods and go to satellite television for their football and baseball.

dcat

Thunderstick said...

God I love TV

dcat said...

Word to that.