Slashdot Mirror
XM And SIRIUS Radio Merging
lenny6998 writes to tell us Yahoo! News is reporting that XM and Sirius Radio, the only two major players in the relatively new market of subscription satellite radio have announced a merger. "The two companies said in a statement that Mel Karmazin, the CEO of Sirius, would become chief executive of the new company while Gary Parsons, the chairman of XM, would remain in that role."
The majority of content is NOT duplicated. Sirius and XM sound NOTHING alike. Sirius channels sound like normal radio stations, but without commercials. XM channels sound like somebody took a random pile of CDs, shoved them in a changer, and hit the "shuffle" button.
They're about as equivalent as Tylenol, Ibuprofen, and Naproxen sodium. Yeah, they're technically all painkillers and reduce fever, but anyone who's ever had a headache or fever knows that they're definitely NOT all the same. Tylenol utterly sucks compared to the other two, but some people are forced to use it because they can't tolerate them. Ibuprofen rocks for headaches, but sucks for fevers (unless you enjoy having your fever come back every 4-6 hours). Naproxen sodium is a godsend for fevers (breaks once, stays that way), but a complete waste of time for headaches. The same is true of Sirius and XM. Both have slightly different audiences with different expectations -- all of whom are going to be FURIOUS if their network mutates into the other. Even slightly.
Talk to anyone who subscribes to either service. I guarantee that 99% of them will react to the news of a merger with absolute horror at the thought that ${their_network} will get turned into ${other_network}. I *guarantee* that if a merger happens and the music channels from one or the other get dropped to "streamline" and "eliminate redundancy", AT LEAST half of the losing service's carriers will leave in disgust. At the same time, the "winner" network will probably lose at least a quarter of its customers if it changes even slightly to be more like the loser's format was. Ultimately, we'll be stuck with one mediocre provider whose financial position is only slightly better than before, and now has hundreds of thousands of angry and pissed off former customers saying bad things about it and discouraging their friends from subscribing.
This is horrible news for the customers of BOTH services. I expect to see an outpouring of anger from customers of BOTH Sirius AND XM demanding that the FCC NOT allow a merged company to own both frequency bands in a desperate effort to derail the whole merger.