This is your merger wake-up call. Happy Monday!
Here are links to some of the past weekend’s stories on the XM - Sirius satellite radio merger. For the record, I’m shifting from mildly positive towards the merger to decidely sceptical. I don’t see why two failed management teams should be allowed to take the path of least resistance and blatantly monopolize a market. The comment section below is for you to tell me what retarded ass-clown I am for not understanding how the future of all things good is riding on the speedy completion of this merger. Hey, I can still be convinced about the errors of my way.
Aviation Week examines the technical challenges of merging XM’s and Sirius’s signal.
Erika D. Smith at The Indianpolis Star has a somewhat odd take on the merger:
NAB’s executive vice president, Dennis Wharton, says a reversal would reward the satellite radio companies with “a monopoly platform.”
I say hogwash.
I agree with Sirius and XM. They operate in a market that’s much bigger than just satellite radio. Sure, they compete with each other, but also with broadcast radio stations, Internet radio stations, iPods and online music services, such as iTunes. Even WiMax, the wireless Internet technology that blankets entire cities, will be a rival when it becomes as easy to stream music in a moving car as it is sitting at home.
If all those wonderful things are going to happen, and they probably are, why not wait for them to become reality before we allow XM and Sirius to monopolize a sliver of the public spectrum?
Carl Howe at Seeking Alpha wites the “merger is like two sinking ships colliding“:
…the fact that executives mustered such a weak case illustrates a more significant issue: satellite radio is a lousy business. Satellite radio has immense fixed costs that never go away and requires huge marketing expenditures to capture subscribers. Regulatory issues are huge, yet the subscriber revenue stream is weak at best. The two companies came to the joint realization that the only business model that could work ever make them profitable in finite time would be to gain monopoly pricing power, just as the cable TV industry did. That’s why these companies want to merge: they need less direct competition and more revenue.
That’s what more or less every business strives for.
The Wall Street Journal’s Sarah McBride has a good summary of the merger and the challenges it’s facing.
Canadian XM-subscriber Maurizio chimes in with thoughts on the satellite radio companies and their proposed merger.
