One Satellite Radio Provider
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.
August 4th, 2008 at 10:57 am
I think this monopoly will in fact turn out to be a net positive for terrestrial broadcasters, since the merged Sirius/XM will now be free to make themselves less competitive in the name of rightsizing, and with no direct competitor, will transform their operation into a more cable-like tiered model, offering less for more. While I think this will hurt the satcaster in the long run, I doubt they’re looking any farther ahead than the next earnings call, and subscribers are certain to get screwed. Not that any of this puts terrestrial broadcasters at an advantage, but it may erode any perceived disadvantage. I suspect the real threat to broadcast media will come from net radio – providing it’s offered in some unmetered form – which means NOT from the wireless carriers. This should get interesting.
Leave a Comment
You must be logged in to post a comment:
Register Here or Log in Here.