http://www.engadget.com/2007/02/19/its-official-xm-and-sirius-plan-to-tie-the-knot/ Engadget Comments for It's official: XM and Sirius plan to tie the knot http://www.engadget.com/media/feedlogo.gif http://www.engadget.com en-us Copyright 2012 Weblogs, Inc. The contents of this feed are available for non-commercial use only. Blogsmith http://www.blogsmith.com/http://www.engadget.com/2007/02/19/its-official-xm-and-sirius-plan-to-tie-the-knot/http://www.engadget.com/2007/02/19/its-official-xm-and-sirius-plan-to-tie-the-knot/Feb 27th 2008 6:49PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2007/02/19/its-official-xm-and-sirius-plan-to-tie-the-knot/http://www.engadget.com/2007/02/19/its-official-xm-and-sirius-plan-to-tie-the-knot/Feb 19th 2007 3:38PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2007/02/19/its-official-xm-and-sirius-plan-to-tie-the-knot/http://www.engadget.com/2007/02/19/its-official-xm-and-sirius-plan-to-tie-the-knot/Feb 19th 2007 4:03PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2007/02/19/its-official-xm-and-sirius-plan-to-tie-the-knot/http://www.engadget.com/2007/02/19/its-official-xm-and-sirius-plan-to-tie-the-knot/Feb 20th 2007 2:35PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2007/02/19/its-official-xm-and-sirius-plan-to-tie-the-knot/http://www.engadget.com/2007/02/19/its-official-xm-and-sirius-plan-to-tie-the-knot/]]>Mar 6th 2007 8:38PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2007/02/19/its-official-xm-and-sirius-plan-to-tie-the-knot/http://www.engadget.com/2007/02/19/its-official-xm-and-sirius-plan-to-tie-the-knot/
Do I hear an at&t as an option... just kidding.
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I hope the merger goes through, I've been an XM subscriber for years, but it'd be great to be able to listen to some of those exclusive Sirius stations.]]>Feb 19th 2007 6:57PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2007/02/19/its-official-xm-and-sirius-plan-to-tie-the-knot/http://www.engadget.com/2007/02/19/its-official-xm-and-sirius-plan-to-tie-the-knot/Feb 19th 2007 3:58PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2007/02/19/its-official-xm-and-sirius-plan-to-tie-the-knot/http://www.engadget.com/2007/02/19/its-official-xm-and-sirius-plan-to-tie-the-knot/Feb 19th 2007 4:07PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2007/02/19/its-official-xm-and-sirius-plan-to-tie-the-knot/http://www.engadget.com/2007/02/19/its-official-xm-and-sirius-plan-to-tie-the-knot/Feb 19th 2007 4:13PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2007/02/19/its-official-xm-and-sirius-plan-to-tie-the-knot/http://www.engadget.com/2007/02/19/its-official-xm-and-sirius-plan-to-tie-the-knot/
The thing everyone forgets is that monopoly isn't the problem: it's the abuse of monopoly to unfairly control a market.

XM and Sirius have so far both struggled for customers for several reasons, not the least of which being problems of customer awareness. Many people simply don't know - and won't learn without extensive research - which network would be better for them (in terms of content, quality and price). People are used to having one radio "network", expecting competitors to just be different channels. The idea of two separate networks with non-interoperable hardware just isn't what people want.

The question is how this new hybrid company (I love the AT&T joke...) will shape its new business model: if no other satellite companies emerge, will they offer channels 'for rent' to other content providers? Will they continue to own all channels? Etc.]]>Feb 19th 2007 4:22PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2007/02/19/its-official-xm-and-sirius-plan-to-tie-the-knot/http://www.engadget.com/2007/02/19/its-official-xm-and-sirius-plan-to-tie-the-knot/Feb 19th 2007 4:38PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2007/02/19/its-official-xm-and-sirius-plan-to-tie-the-knot/http://www.engadget.com/2007/02/19/its-official-xm-and-sirius-plan-to-tie-the-knot/Feb 19th 2007 4:21PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2007/02/19/its-official-xm-and-sirius-plan-to-tie-the-knot/http://www.engadget.com/2007/02/19/its-official-xm-and-sirius-plan-to-tie-the-knot/"I guess the FCC would get involved for the wireless transmissions...as they have no ground on satelites."

Actually, yes, they do get involved in things related to satellite communication. RF is RF whether it's staying on the earth or being relayed via satellite.

In addition, the FCC gets involved in ownership rules related to traditional broadcasters so they probably have a say from that side of things as well. I actually would be in favor of this happening but there are a number of regulatory hurdles for XM and Sirius to clear...]]>Feb 19th 2007 5:13PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2007/02/19/its-official-xm-and-sirius-plan-to-tie-the-knot/http://www.engadget.com/2007/02/19/its-official-xm-and-sirius-plan-to-tie-the-knot/Feb 19th 2007 5:44PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2007/02/19/its-official-xm-and-sirius-plan-to-tie-the-knot/http://www.engadget.com/2007/02/19/its-official-xm-and-sirius-plan-to-tie-the-knot/Feb 19th 2007 4:29PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2007/02/19/its-official-xm-and-sirius-plan-to-tie-the-knot/http://www.engadget.com/2007/02/19/its-official-xm-and-sirius-plan-to-tie-the-knot/Feb 19th 2007 4:47PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2007/02/19/its-official-xm-and-sirius-plan-to-tie-the-knot/http://www.engadget.com/2007/02/19/its-official-xm-and-sirius-plan-to-tie-the-knot/Feb 19th 2007 5:28PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2007/02/19/its-official-xm-and-sirius-plan-to-tie-the-knot/http://www.engadget.com/2007/02/19/its-official-xm-and-sirius-plan-to-tie-the-knot/Feb 19th 2007 4:24PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2007/02/19/its-official-xm-and-sirius-plan-to-tie-the-knot/http://www.engadget.com/2007/02/19/its-official-xm-and-sirius-plan-to-tie-the-knot/Feb 19th 2007 4:36PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2007/02/19/its-official-xm-and-sirius-plan-to-tie-the-knot/http://www.engadget.com/2007/02/19/its-official-xm-and-sirius-plan-to-tie-the-knot/
I hope they change the name to SeXM. ]]>Feb 19th 2007 4:40PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2007/02/19/its-official-xm-and-sirius-plan-to-tie-the-knot/http://www.engadget.com/2007/02/19/its-official-xm-and-sirius-plan-to-tie-the-knot/
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And it really isn't a monopoly, because other satellite radio companies could spring up, plus you still have a choice between regular radio and satellite radio.

I wonder what the new name will be... SiriusXM?]]>Feb 19th 2007 4:41PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2007/02/19/its-official-xm-and-sirius-plan-to-tie-the-knot/http://www.engadget.com/2007/02/19/its-official-xm-and-sirius-plan-to-tie-the-knot/
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If this goes through then expect to pay a lot more for satellite radio. Or see package deals like cable tv, getting less valuable content for the same price with the "basic" service or pay double for the "premium" which has all the popular channels. My money is on the package deal, people will have some of their favorite channels bumped to the premium package so people are forced to "upgrade," then they will release a nice PR statement saying the packages offer maximum value to the customer with 2 great options to enjoy.]]>Feb 19th 2007 5:27PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2007/02/19/its-official-xm-and-sirius-plan-to-tie-the-knot/http://www.engadget.com/2007/02/19/its-official-xm-and-sirius-plan-to-tie-the-knot/Feb 19th 2007 9:02PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2007/02/19/its-official-xm-and-sirius-plan-to-tie-the-knot/http://www.engadget.com/2007/02/19/its-official-xm-and-sirius-plan-to-tie-the-knot/Feb 19th 2007 5:08PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2007/02/19/its-official-xm-and-sirius-plan-to-tie-the-knot/http://www.engadget.com/2007/02/19/its-official-xm-and-sirius-plan-to-tie-the-knot/
Big govt is a democrat agenda, not republican. Republicans, FYI, want small government. "Big business", well, i guess, republicans want capitolism, which can result in big business. As opposed to socialism...]]>Feb 19th 2007 5:08PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2007/02/19/its-official-xm-and-sirius-plan-to-tie-the-knot/http://www.engadget.com/2007/02/19/its-official-xm-and-sirius-plan-to-tie-the-knot/Feb 19th 2007 5:52PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2007/02/19/its-official-xm-and-sirius-plan-to-tie-the-knot/http://www.engadget.com/2007/02/19/its-official-xm-and-sirius-plan-to-tie-the-knot/
way to look up some terms on wikipedia before posting; i don't think anyone will dispute your expertise...]]>Feb 19th 2007 7:30PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2007/02/19/its-official-xm-and-sirius-plan-to-tie-the-knot/http://www.engadget.com/2007/02/19/its-official-xm-and-sirius-plan-to-tie-the-knot/Feb 19th 2007 8:20PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2007/02/19/its-official-xm-and-sirius-plan-to-tie-the-knot/http://www.engadget.com/2007/02/19/its-official-xm-and-sirius-plan-to-tie-the-knot/(NOTE: Guess who just submitted a $3 TRILLION dollar budget to Congress? HINT: It ain't Hillary Clinton)]]>Feb 20th 2007 2:35PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2007/02/19/its-official-xm-and-sirius-plan-to-tie-the-knot/http://www.engadget.com/2007/02/19/its-official-xm-and-sirius-plan-to-tie-the-knot/
And since nobody is paying attention to this anyway I'll throw in my two bits... both political parties are crooked. It's really about who sucks less. And as a whole Democraps have raised taxes on the middle class more than Repubicans. I know most of the readers live in their parents basement smoking pot all day playing WoW but any working class man with kids will tell you, it's all about taxes! The less there are the better.

Now back to the show....]]>Feb 20th 2007 4:11PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2007/02/19/its-official-xm-and-sirius-plan-to-tie-the-knot/http://www.engadget.com/2007/02/19/its-official-xm-and-sirius-plan-to-tie-the-knot/]]>Feb 19th 2007 5:09PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2007/02/19/its-official-xm-and-sirius-plan-to-tie-the-knot/http://www.engadget.com/2007/02/19/its-official-xm-and-sirius-plan-to-tie-the-knot/
Don't worry, there won't be any celebratin' from me if this happens.]]>Feb 19th 2007 5:44PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2007/02/19/its-official-xm-and-sirius-plan-to-tie-the-knot/http://www.engadget.com/2007/02/19/its-official-xm-and-sirius-plan-to-tie-the-knot/Feb 19th 2007 5:23PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2007/02/19/its-official-xm-and-sirius-plan-to-tie-the-knot/http://www.engadget.com/2007/02/19/its-official-xm-and-sirius-plan-to-tie-the-knot/That being said, I'm still in favor of this merger. Even though I'm not a subscriber, I still want satellite radio to survive.]]>Feb 19th 2007 5:24PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2007/02/19/its-official-xm-and-sirius-plan-to-tie-the-knot/http://www.engadget.com/2007/02/19/its-official-xm-and-sirius-plan-to-tie-the-knot/Feb 19th 2007 6:44PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2007/02/19/its-official-xm-and-sirius-plan-to-tie-the-knot/http://www.engadget.com/2007/02/19/its-official-xm-and-sirius-plan-to-tie-the-knot/
I hope that if the merger is approved, ALL channels will be available to both ex-XM and Ex-Sirius subscribers.

I guess the magic word here is "synergy" (business speak for laying off redundant employees). If I were working in any area other than content, I'd be worried about losing my job. Even with content, they could also cut many duplicate channels, such as all those duplicated "decades" channels.

Personally, even though I'm a Sirius subscriber for my daily dose of The Howard Show, I still find local terestial radio of value (news/traffic/sports/concert info). So, that said, local radio is no where near dead, but satellite is surely going to be a more interesting alternative.]]>Feb 19th 2007 5:37PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2007/02/19/its-official-xm-and-sirius-plan-to-tie-the-knot/http://www.engadget.com/2007/02/19/its-official-xm-and-sirius-plan-to-tie-the-knot/
Thanks for clarifying that for picaso. Republicans are all for capitalism/free markets and would like to pull the governments role out as much as possible. I don't really agree w/bush often, but i think he wanted to be trigger happy when it came to bush]]>Feb 19th 2007 5:39PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2007/02/19/its-official-xm-and-sirius-plan-to-tie-the-knot/http://www.engadget.com/2007/02/19/its-official-xm-and-sirius-plan-to-tie-the-knot/
Have you looked at what Reagan and Bush II have done vs. what Clinton did? The specter of Dems and big gov't is funny since over the last 30 years, it's really the GOP that inflates the federal gov't.]]>Feb 19th 2007 6:22PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2007/02/19/its-official-xm-and-sirius-plan-to-tie-the-knot/http://www.engadget.com/2007/02/19/its-official-xm-and-sirius-plan-to-tie-the-knot/Feb 19th 2007 6:20PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2007/02/19/its-official-xm-and-sirius-plan-to-tie-the-knot/http://www.engadget.com/2007/02/19/its-official-xm-and-sirius-plan-to-tie-the-knot/
-Yes, this is a monopoly-- FM radio is not a real competitor to satellite. Do you think anyone int heir right mind would pay $13/month for XM or Sirius if FM had a comparable offering?

-No, I really don't see them keeping all combined channels and not raising the price. Right now, XM and Sirius both have different slices of the RF spectrum and they both use different audio codecs. The only way they could offer all existing programming would be to force all subscribers to purchase new hardware to pick up the new frequencies and decode both codecs. If they make all current hardware obsolete, they're gonna have alot of pissed off customers. Not to mention car manufacturers who have been betting on one or the other by installing their receivers for years. I think they will consolidate their channels and use the newly-found spectrum for arbitrary BS like streaming video.

-As a Sirius customer, this really pisses me off. In my opinion, Sirius' programming is far superior to that of XM. Perhaps it is because Sirius doesn't have ClearChannel telling them what to do. CC invested quite a bit in XM and are calling alot of the shots over there. It was CC who forced XM to put commercials on some of their music channels. Perhaps this is also why XM's lineup lacks diversity and sounds like every (ClearChannel-owned) FM station.

It seems to me that XM is really the beneficiary here. Sirius has Howard Stern, NFL, NASCAR, NBA, NHL, and a handful of other sports, new video streaming (recently demoed, search Engadget), arguably a better audio codec, no commercials... What does XM have? MLB and golf, um, er, more subscribers, and, well, I'm spent. Sirius as a business benefits, since the two will be of equal worth for purposes of the merger, yet Sirius has less subscribers. However, I think Sirius was only a year or two away from catching, and maybe surpassing XM. Either way the subscribers (of both services) get dicked in the long run.]]>Feb 19th 2007 6:18PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2007/02/19/its-official-xm-and-sirius-plan-to-tie-the-knot/http://www.engadget.com/2007/02/19/its-official-xm-and-sirius-plan-to-tie-the-knot/
Real winners here are sports fans - every sport is now uder one roof.

Losers - talk radio fans. Can O&A and Howard coexist? Hmm... all I know is that if anyone touches my ron and fez, they're gonne get hurt.]]>Feb 19th 2007 6:44PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2007/02/19/its-official-xm-and-sirius-plan-to-tie-the-knot/http://www.engadget.com/2007/02/19/its-official-xm-and-sirius-plan-to-tie-the-knot/Feb 19th 2007 7:36PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2007/02/19/its-official-xm-and-sirius-plan-to-tie-the-knot/http://www.engadget.com/2007/02/19/its-official-xm-and-sirius-plan-to-tie-the-knot/
1) The monthly cost will go up.
2) They will introduce more tiered pricing options
3) The amount of money they pay for content will go down-- no more price wars
4) XM/Sirius profits will go up substantially.

This would be the classic definition of a government-created monopoly. There would be only one company allowed to offer nationwide (satellite) radio. I think it's a terrible idea. And, if one of them were to go bankrupt, someone else would pick up the assets very cheaply and have a very profitable business on their hands. Both companies are quite profitable on an EBIDTA basis, it's only the capital costs of the satellites that makes them less profitable.]]>Feb 19th 2007 9:14PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2007/02/19/its-official-xm-and-sirius-plan-to-tie-the-knot/http://www.engadget.com/2007/02/19/its-official-xm-and-sirius-plan-to-tie-the-knot/
"There would be only one company allowed to offer nationwide (satellite) radio."

Uh, who said no one else would be ALLOWED to offer satellite radio? Maybe you are thinking of the terrestrial radio monopolists.]]>Feb 20th 2007 2:52PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2007/02/19/its-official-xm-and-sirius-plan-to-tie-the-knot/http://www.engadget.com/2007/02/19/its-official-xm-and-sirius-plan-to-tie-the-knot/Feb 19th 2007 9:23PM