Mid-day breaks are for satellite-radio merger talk
XM Satellite Radio announced its fourth-quarter erning this morning (Sirius will do the same tomorrow). For all of 2006, XM lost $732 million compared to $675 million. Q4 losses, however, were lower in 2006 than in 2005.
[Update: Barron's has a blog post with more numbers, analysis, and comments from XM's conference call. You can listen to the conference call here.]
Skylar Sutton says the merger won’t happen, based on law and facts.
XM-subscriber and audiophile John Caldwell wants the satellite radio companies to substantially improve the sound quality of their programs. He also provides XM and Sirius with three straightforward suggestions, two of which strike me as quite unrealistic (satellite rdio not calling itsel radio? Come on!).
Amy Gilroy brings us retailers’ rection to the proposed merger in This Week In Consumer Electronics:
The proposed XM and Sirius merger received a generally favorable reception by industry members, under the proviso that steps are taken to prevent market confusion near term.
Several retailers and suppliers, while encouraged by the benefits of a united satellite radio company, said consumer confusion could hamper sales of current satellite radio receivers.
Sirius CEO Mel Karmazin was a guest on Howard Stern’s show today, reports FMQB. Among other things, Karmazin insisted that the deal in fact is a 50-50 merger, in spite of claims to the contrary by business reporters who have analyzed available documents.
Michael Benidt at Hidden Business Treasures has doubts about the entire enterprise:
The XM/Sirius story last week was big news, but I’m not really sure why.
For a lot of “oldies” listeners these days, they couldn’t care less about such changes on their radio dials, or in the atmosphere. Nope, they’re getting their music from their computers.
But as a commenter points out, that’s not an option when you’re driving your car and it probably won’t be for years to come.
February 28th, 2007 at 3:26 pm
I know it seems impossible, but both of these Internet music services have “to-go” options. As long as you keep paying your monthly subscription you can play Rhapsody and Yahoo on your MP3 player - which works nicely in a car, either wireless to FM or the old fashioned way to your tape deck. And, again, it’s not a genre of music, it’s your chosen tracks and playlists, or random shuffles of your favorite playlists.
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