The XM and Sirius agreement should have been done a long time ago and is the only thing that will give satellite radio any real chance at long-term survival. Subscription products in a free environment are always niche, and cross-platform incompatibility prevents complete market penetration. Eliminating system incompatibilities will enable people to buy a satellite radio without any worries that they are buying a dead horse. Format wars are alway dumb, as nobody really ever wins.
The two companies worked over the weekend to finalize a plan that is expected to be structured as a “merger of equals,” although ABC News has learned the plan calls for Sirius CEO Mel Karamzen to run the new company.
As I said above, this is the only thing that will give subscription (ad-supported may come and dominate for all we know) satellite radio any opportunity to succeed.
I hope the players will get better the ones they have now are pretty crappy.
I don’t see satellite radio surviving behind being a niche. It’s a solution to a problem hardly anyone has.
Oh great. A monopoly. Super.
3. “Oh great. A monopoly. Super.”
A monopoly over a product that no one actually wants is nothing to be concerned about. I have a monopoly over my own shit, but it hasn’t done me a bit of good.
#2, #4 it makes you wonder why cable television has thrived. doesn’t it?
so long as I can get MLB and NPR on one receiver, I am cool with it. given all the other media consolidation that’s been going on, I find it highly suspicious that the FCC would balk at this. the terrestrial radio oligopoly has been trying to use the Federal government to cripple satelite competition for years. It would not surprise me if they pushed to kill the deal.
and satellite radio really should go to an approximation of the cable TV model – have a commercial supported basic tier that is free (yes I know basic cable isn’t free) and a subscription “premium” tier without commercials.
People complaining about paying for radio? Hah, the same whiners I heard complaining about TV years ago.
I gladly pay a few bucks a month to eliminate the commercials, have infinitely better sound quality, and some actual diversity in my music. If you prefer to listen to the same 10 songs over and over again then FM is just the ticket for ya.
#2, many, many people are fed up with “free” OTA radio and have not listened to it for years.
Companies buy up all the stations and take away music choices when they change formats.
I enjoy the quality of satellite radio and that I have the same channels wherever I go nationwide. It’s awesome having over 100 channels of news, music and comedy.
It’s like cable TV for your car radio. Who watches OTA TV anymore? About 15% of the population. I see sat. radio, or what it might evolve into, as becoming the norm for receiving programming in your car.
They merged…
It’s about time.. I won’t pay for it but i’m surrounded by people that do..
they all seem to love sat radio
but it’s still gonna be a long time before they make good money
Isn’t Satellite radio ultimate doomed? To be killed off by fast digital cellular service?
I’ve never read or heard this anywhere but it seems kind of obvious.
I’m anti-monopoly but this merger doesn’t create a monopoly on radio — just on one delivery method, so it doesn’t strike me as much of a problem.
9. “many, many people are fed up with “free” OTA radio and have not listened to it for years.”
So you’re saying they solved their radio problem by simply not listening to radio anymore? Makes sense to me. I haven’t listened to radio in several years. If I want music I’ll bring my MP3 player. I’m guessing a lot of people are doing that nowadays as a replacement for radio without the expense of satellite radio.
“I enjoy the quality of satellite radio and that I have the same channels wherever I go nationwide.”
What you’re forgetting is that the overwhelming majority of people do not travel nationwide, especially by car or truck. Sure, if I were a trucker I’d love satellite radio. But considering my drive to work is only 20 minutes, it really wouldn’t be worth it.
3,
The issue is not a monopoly as much as a common operating standard.
Wait, you’re endorsing a merger, and in the media industry no less?
Maybe you’ll consider this every other time you’re bashing big corporate monopolies.
17,
Read what I say in my post. Where did I say I support a monopoly? It is the common device standard that is important.
I’ve been a Sirius subscriber (and stock holder) for about a year or so.
I really enjoy the commercial free music. I also love the variety of different music I get. If I want to hear the typical top 40 “hits” over and over, I even have a choice for that as well.
I listen to Howard Stern when my kid isn’t in the car, and Radio Disney when he is.
I have an iPod, and a way to play it in the car. Sometimes, I play the iPod, sometimes I play Sat. Radio. if someone gives me a CD to listen to, I’ll play that as well. What am I leaving out. FM radio.
In my small market, although Clear Channel owns most of the radio stations, the #1 station in our market for the coveted 18-24 demographic is a station NOT owned by them. I like the morning show crew from that station, and my wife still enjoys listening to them. I just can’t stand to listen to stoopid (and yes, I know stupid is the correct spelling, but it’s just my thing) commercials that take up 1/3 of every hour.
Heck, I was a fan of JP Broadcasting’s “Bob and Sheri” show, UNTIL I got Sirius. Now, I ‘d rather listen to Howard, or music in the mornings.
I’m hoping that since it seems that Sirius’ CEO will head up the new company, we won’t have ads on music stations. That is a big selling point of Sirius versus XM. I’m paying my subscription, I don’t want ads!
And to those who say that HD radio will beat sattelite? Not if HD is going to be supported by advertisers. Radio is where the local TV stations were 30 years ago (or so)
You have to wonder how this makes economic sense. XM offers about 170 channels and Sirius about 190 which combined will bring the total to 360. What is anybody going to do with 360 channels? Both charge $12.95 a month for service so to pay for all those combined channels, they would have to charge $25.90. Who is going to pay that? It would be like paying for both services and why would you want or need that? Then there’s the problem of incompatible standards. You could continue to listen to one or the other depending on which platform you bought into, but you would need new equipment if you wanted to listen to the combined service. Not to mention creating a monopoly in the satellite radio market. What this proves is that neither of these companies can survive on their own. If they could, they wouldn’t need this merger.
“Isn’t Satellite radio ultimate doomed? To be killed off by fast digital cellular service? ”
Haw! Once cellular service manages to solve their seemingly insurmountable problem of not being able to provide TELEPHONE service on a reliable basis, they might be a threat to satellite radio. I don’t see that happening any time soon, base on historical performance. Once I can go a few days in any major metropolitan area (Boston, Philadelphia, Minneapolis, Chicago) without being plagued with No Bars of Power, dropped calls, calls so crackly and broken up that you can’t hear your own conversation (wasn’t digital service supposed to have solved this one 10 years ago??), and all the other flaws of current cell phone telephony, I would consider going to a cellular radio format. Assuming that the fee schedule was based on something other than the current charge-per-minute model. I wouldn’t hold off on getting a satellite radio waiting for that to happen. If they haven’t done it yet, it’s unlikely that it’s going to happen. More likely that Micro$oft will come out with a new version of Windows where everything works.
21, I think it can make sense, and I bet it will. The cost savings will be huge (huge!) while revenues remain the same. Then, rather than the expensive (and pointless) competition with each other, the combined company will finally get to compete directly against FM radio. And we all know that FM is a sitting duck. An anachronism. FM simply cannot compete, and a couple years from now this conversation will seem silly. 🙂
The transition will be ugly, but if they can do that, the rest is downhill.
What’s the path to the predictions for the year entry? I could swear I had this on my list (not that it wasn’t hard to call).
I’ve been a Sirius subscriber since 2004, and as long as the service remains, I’m happy. The only content from XM I care about is “Cinemagic” and the ability to listen to ACC content.
And those folks calling it a monopoly–get serious. Satellite’s radio competition is free radio. Just as Satellite television’s competition is cable and “free” tv. And I don’t see how the “cellular revolution” is going to help me listen to radio in my car. I’m not even supposed to talk on my cell phone in the car–how am I supposed to listen to cellular radio now?
And they won’t combine all the channels–they have tons of overlap of stations (XM’s Bone Yard = Sirius’ Hair Nation, etc.). They’ll merge the content and probably end up with about 200 channels.
There’s a lot of knee jerk reaction here–everyone just settle down and we’ll see how things shake out.
Satellite radio is a mistake.
It was sold as a commercial-free subscription service, just as cable TV was when it was introduced. Look, ma, no commercials, if you just pay for your content.
then commercials arrived, and it looked exactly like OTA TV, only now you have to toss a car payment at them every month for the priviledge of watching commercials. And now, we are getting to pay for INFOmericials on cable TV as well. Paying to see commercials.
Now the two competitors are merging. And will now commence airing commercials. And will continually raise rates.
All this comes at the expense of our local radio stations, which have knitted the nation together, one way or another, for most of a century. Only a couple of corporations really control that market now. The programming has become idiotic and pre-digested. The censors are hammering hard. And now we get satellite radio, newly converted into a monopoly. Adam Smith warned us about this…
So much for the Anti-Trust Laws in this country.
Yet another thing that Bushco, Inc. is abolishing.
Pretty soon, the US is going to look like it did in the 1880s!
Well doesn’t this give the combined company a monopoly on satellite radio?
28. “Well doesn’t this give the combined company a monopoly on satellite radio?”
Yeah, but there is competition. If the combined XM/Sirius started raising its rates too high people would stop paying and would listen to regular radio or to their MP3 players, or to their CD players, or to podcasts, etc. Thus, market forces would still work to keep prices low.
And lastly, there is nothing keeping some other company from entering the market, other than start-up costs, which would affect any start-up.
5. “#2, #4 it makes you wonder why cable television has thrived. doesn’t it?”
Cable TV was a solution to a problem people did in fact have. At one time there were wide areas in the US that could not receive over-the-air broadcasts. So cable companies filled that niche.
And even among people who could receive broadcast TV, they had to use antennas to receive the channels. Basically, you had to get up and turn the knob which turned your antenna to the right direction. With cable, you’d get all the channels without any of the fuss.
And cable companies didn’t stop there, they added 24/7 movie channels and other niche channels which you simply could not get on broadcast. Thus it’s not surprising at all the cable TV and satellite TV won out over broadcast TV.
But radio and TV are two different things. People will sit and watch TV for hours, but will tend to listen to the radio only when they’re doing something else. E.g., working around the house or driving.
And as I stated, there are plenty of other distractions out there that compete with satellite radio that are less expensive.
I’ll put it this way, if satellite radio was a genuine solution to a problem people actually had, i.e., provided something for people to listen to when they’re doing a task at a price people were willing to pay, it would be profitable.
30,
Well said.
#30 gets +5 smarty points.
30,
remove the First paragrph and you are almost right…
they took current/old tech, and STILL do..
they made it so you didnt need an antanna, they increased channel selection…But, they went into areas that HAD Broadcast TV, and into Cities ONLY…and this is STILL the format they use.
They dont, and will NOT run a COAX out into the middle of nowhere.
They gave a Better signal, most time, Less hassle in tuning, and more selection.