XM and Sirius Satellite radio companies spend way too much on exclusive radio talent like Oprah, Howard Stern, and Major League Baseball games. For better financial health, they're proposing a "merger of equals", where Sirius plans to buy XM for 4.6 Billion in stock. The FCC may oppose it, worrying about an anti competitive marketplace. Meanwhile, the two companies are whining that iPods are kicking its ass. I'd agree.
My thoughts...
If the FCC allows this, yes, they would be the only sat radio folks in town, and the word monopoly comes to mind. But that doesn't mean that we have no where else to get music from. So, If XM and Sirius try to jack their prices, and lose their competitive edge they'll lose customers. I'd say, the merger should help us all. As long as prices stay the same, and content stays as rich, we won't have to choose between the talent on each network. A big if, especially in the long term, but I believe the market will sort it all out.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20070220/wr_nm/xm_sirius_dc [Yahoo!]













Comments
Sirius came with one of my cars, and XM with another. After using both of them, I must say, I like XM A LOT better, and I'm worried this merger will F everything up.
i dunno... listening to the exhaust note of my car is free... no, its not. gas costs money.
im still not paying for radio.
I'm with drumz0rz,
I love my XM radio. If this merger goes through I don't what will happen...hopefully prices stay the same and all my favorite channels on XM don't change and i get the same service I'm happy...plus I don't think it's right to say that you could get music from somewhere else, because I think the majority of satellite radio users are people who need something to cope with in traffic with their cars...I disagree that it is in competition with the iPod and Zune. These two companies need to stay separate and keep a competition in the satellite radio industry.
If you read the news releases they have been putting out, they make statements about adding more tiers and higher end services...
They do also making costs lower and chip sets smaller, but I think that the result will be a merger of content, but 50%+ will be moved into tiers that cost additional monthly fees...
and the baseline fee will remain about the same..
The FCC won't claim it a monopoly. Around here, the only land cable option is Comcast, and people are kinda pissed about it. Consumerrs tried to complain about the local Comcast monopoly, but the FCC says it's not a monopoly since satelite cable is available to everyone in the nation. Consumers have other radio options besides xm- regular and HD.
I came over to Sirius for Howard, but have since abandoned that show for all the OTHER great content that's available.
If the content stays awesome and my bill doesn't increase we're just fine.
I also have both Sirius and XM. I hate XM and am worried that the merger is going to affect Sirius. I love Cosmo radio and the fact that Sirius does not have commercials on their music stations. My significant other complains about the amount of commercials on the country music stations. I get frustrated everytime I tune to flight 26 and hear the SAME songs. Sirius gives me great music and stations like BBC1. I am afraid the merger will make Sirius music boring like XM's. Competition is indeed good.
I bought XM for my cars so that I could get NASCAR on the road. Then Sirius pays more for the rights and away it goes. I hope it goes through because I'm not re-buying the equipment and changing subscriptions just for the greed of NASCAR.
I bought an XM Inno last year, and love it. I went with XM for their MLB stations so I can hear the Cubs games.
I was excited about the merger until I heard about the tiered pricing. If that is true, I am confident the MLB and NFL games will be the first to be moved to a higher tier.
Perhaps I should prepay 2 years now to lock in my contract pre-merger.
There are ways around prices to get a lower price...
To answer the question specifically, I don't care. IMO, the best part of sat radio isn't the music, it's the other stuff: comedy, sports, news, talk, etc.
Im torn between judgments here.. for one there are relatively high development costs in their market tending to suggest its a market where a natural monopoly must exist if any company is to exist at all(mr=mc). Then again this could be the last stitch effort of a product that has shown deadly-slow growth. Either way this merger doesnt work if the dont take the obvious next step of combining the services into one and eliminating the overlapping content.
I have Sirius in my cars and the rest of my family has a mix of both providers.
I can promise you one thing. If Sirius/XM together bring commercials to this party like XM has done on the Clear Channel...um... Channels then I am canceling my account. PERIOD.
I went to satellite radio to skip the commercials in the first place.
P.S. Die in a fire Clear Channel.
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