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Justice Dept. Approves XM/Sirius Merger
Ripit writes "Just yesterday the Justice Department approved the merger of Sirius Satellite Radio and XM Radio, a Sirius takeover to the tune of $5 billion. The transaction was approved without conditions, despite opposition from consumer groups and an intense lobbying campaign by the land-based radio industry. 'In explaining the decision, Justice officials said the options beyond satellite radio -- digital recordings, high-definition radio, Web radio -- mean that XM and Sirius could merge without diminishing competition. "There are other alternatives out there," Assistant Attorney General Thomas O. Barnett said in a conference call. "We just simply found that the evidence didn't indicate that it would harm consumers."'"
They have to compete with every free radio station in the country, internet radio and other forms of music/entertainment content.
Comparing this with TV is the short-bus way of looking at it. TV you can only get from Cable (usually only one player in town), Satellite, or OTA (which isn't eveywhere either). I don't know of many places that you can't get at least 10 radio statios + internet.
It's a "new" format and it has to compete with other audio broadcast formats out there. Look at the bigger picture.
I know not everyone will agree with me on this, and they are entitled to stick it to me after they read this post. That being said, I have been an XM subscriber for a year now and am excited about this.
Radio needs Satellite radio! For the last decade, I have been striving to find quality programming on radio that wasn't lacking the polished professionalism of most college radio stations and at the same time wasn't the over-researched, payola driven, target market homogenization of your typical Clear Channel station. That was found in Satellite radio for me.
The key differences with satellite radio and AM/FM these days is this. AM/FM is losing listeners every day. Advertising is down 15% in the last few years and listeners are turning off the AM/FM radio for other mediums. Instead of taking a chance with formats like in years past, stations owned by large corporations and disappointed shareholders instead become more conservative and try to be less distinguishable than before to attract the largest number of listeners. What happens is a large number of stations in a given market end up with eerily familiar formats, with little to no variance in station programming.
Satellite radio has taken a different approach. With such a comparatively smaller audience nationwide when compared to there traditional counterparts, Satellite radio will do anything to attract listeners, and that has been through offering dozens of niche stations with specific programming. It's fantastic sitting in my car and listening to Deep House music in one station, NCAA March Madness another, and obscure underground classic from another. It's what FM used to be 13-40 years ago in my opinion.
In short, FM is playing conservative to keep what listeners they have and are losing daily, while Satellite is taking chances to draw whatever listeners they can get.
Why is this merger good? Both stations are fiscally hurting, and a quality medium like Satellite radio needs to be strengthened against not only AM/FM/HD radio, but iPods/Podcasting, and streaming radio online.
The issue has little to do with what competition remains within satellite radio, but whether there remains competition. Satellite radio competes with broadcast radio and a number of other formats, so the merger does not remove competition, but makes the combined company more efficient and less likely to lose money.
Both XM and Sirius are bleeding money right now and that can't last forever. If the the industry allowed them both to go under that would counterproductive to helping competition.
Tesla was a genius. Edison however was a overrated hack who liked to torture puppies.