Justice Department says XM-Sirius merger is good to go
The United States Department of Justice has just announced that it doesn’t view the merger between XM and Sirius as anti-competitive:
After a careful and thorough review of the proposed transaction, the [Department of Justice's Antitrust] Division concluded that the evidence does not demonstrate that the proposed merger of XM and Sirius is likely to substantially lessen competition, and that the transaction therefore is not likely to harm consumers. The Division reached this conclusion because the evidence did not show that the merger would enable the parties to profitably increase prices to satellite radio customers for several reasons, including: a lack of competition between the parties in important segments even without the merger; the competitive alternative services available to consumers; technological change that is expected to make those alternatives increasingly attractive over time; and efficiencies likely to flow from the transaction that could benefit consumers.
Read the full statement by the Department of Justice.
Is this good news for XM and Sirius subscribers? I imagine most of the exclusive content the two stations carry will be made available to the combined sets of subscribers, while some content will be dropped. There will presumably be a substantial reduction in the number of music channels as XM and Sirius offers many such channels that are more or less overlapping.
Will, as the Antitrust Division speculates, the merger result in lower prices for equipment, or will receivers cost more, at least in the short run, to finance whatever technological solution is required to make merged programming available to both XM and Sirius subscriber bases?
More to come.
