The FCC’s votes are in. Sirius and XM will soon merge into a single company. Are you surprised? I’m not.

In a narrow view, Sirius and XM competed only with each other. In a more realistic view, they competed with every other form of audio media including terrestrial radio, Internet radio and media players. Will this approved merger be the end of terrestrial radio? Hardly.

After nearly 1.5 years of challenging the transaction, the NAB lost its fight. We saw a steady stream of activity in this debate, and now that it’s over, NAB Executive Vice President Dennis Wharton issued a statement: “Today’s vote certainly comes as a disappointment to NAB. We continue to believe that consumers are best served by competition rather than monopolies.”

Competition is healthy. I agree with that. So monopolies are bad, but superopolies formed from a few companies owning huge numbers of stations in a single market are good.