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XM and Sirius merged yesterday
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In case anyone hasn't heard the two satellite radio giants have merged, it was announced yesterday. I wouldn't be surprised if they start raising prices, since they basically will have a monopoly.
http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,1895,2096700,00.asp
http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,1895,2096700,00.asp
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Frankly, if I'm paying to listen to radio stations and then suddenly a company decides to charge more for me to listen to those stations without any added incentive, I'm very likely to just go back to regular AM/FM and listening to CDs/mp3 players.
But I don't know anyone who has it.
Hush, they're listening!
Fuck you! I spent 150 for a car receiver and 10 bucks a month already.
Also, when your service is such a premium to begin with, cries of monopoly don't quite stretch as far to me. It's not like the consumers will be locked out of radio all together.
I must come in and congratulate you on your Mitch Hedburg reference.
Also, I haven't listened to satellite radio in a year or so, but I did enjoy it, as you could have a very select, specific station if you were in the mood for a certain style of music.
The only radio I listen to in the car is NPR, and they were actually discussing this when I was on lunch. Some expert said one of the things the FCC considered when these satellite companies were coming on was that there would be two of them to drive competition so one couldn't be a monopoly.
In addition to the FCC approving it, the shareholders have to as well. However, seeing as how both their stocks are at the price of dirt (actually, fill dirt used for building foundations is pretty expensive, I take that back) the shareholders will jump on this faster than a little kid on his new trampoline on christmas morning, only to slip on the sheen of ice that has developed and fall between the springs gashing his whole body on the way through and bursting his soft little head on the earth below, effectively ruining christmas, not only for the family, but for the ER personnel as well, because who wants to deal with a screaming and bloody child on christmas? No one.
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Your analogies really are the best.
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Yeah, what he said.. there was no merger yesterday, just an announcement of an intent to merge if they get the proper approvals.
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anyway, i have the xm and love it. assuming ron and fez remain and price is reasonable, i dont see why i should stop. also: even if it does go through im sure it will take a year or more for any actual changes to services.
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If satellite radio was the only form of radio, of course this would be a monopoly. Microsoft is a monopoly because Windows is used by at least 90% of home users and few people know how to use anything else, but satellite radio doesn't have that kind of market share yet.
No. No one thinks that.
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Quite the opposite, from what I've read. The thing is that they play the numbers game differently.
XM reports accounts activated, whereas Sirius reports accounts sold, but not necessarily being used. Ergo, all those cars sitting in lots unsold with Sirius receivers in them, they report those as subscribers since they're prepaid. I read that the actual number of people using XM is greater than Sirius. It's similar to how Nintendo reports units sold and Sony reports units shipped, to put a gaming spin on it.
Sirius does have the greater market cap, though, due to investors. It'll be interesting to see if this pans out.
or Brawl. 4854.6102.3895 Name: NU..
as an aside... I used to want to be in the radio business... I started doing voiceovers... interning at stations... then I realized how stupid the people in that business are... I mean they really are dumb and there's no other way to describe it
so I went to school instead
It baffles me too. I bought XM for my girlfriend a while ago, and we only use it to listen to music. We're not very big on paying for radio, but she moved to NY, which doesn't have any country stations. My decision on which one to go with was made by which one had more country stations (XM had 6, I think Sirius had 5). Not exactly my cup of tea, but it pleased her and she can even take it when she goes home to CA and listen to the stations she likes.
or Brawl. 4854.6102.3895 Name: NU..
Considering XM still has the higher userbase (for now) and a stock price that's four times that of Sirius(SIRI:3.84, XMSR:14.95), I would say they were exactly getting their ass kicked.
That being said, it could do good for both sides. XM has the better units, especially in the portable area, but Sirius does have programming like the NFL. They both have their exclusive "Stars" that to be honest is probably one of the reasons they're both hurting for money. These stupid, overpriced exclusive celebrities.
Combined though, they come to about 14 million subscribers. Not OMGHOOGE, but it's not exactly something to sneeze at either.
The thing that worries me about this more than anything is that they're talking about tiered/ala carte subscriptions. They make it sound like essentially they're going to turn it into cable tv. You want the sports package? Extra. You want the talk radio package, extra. Comedy? Extra. Ugh. Then you have the hardware on both sides that were basically designed to make sure that they wouldn't work with the other companies signal, and both sides with their big exclusive OEM/car manufacturer contracts that would leave a ton of dead radios and pissed off consumers if they couldn't find some kind of hardware middle ground.
Problem is, both sides are already maxing out their current bandwidth as it is, so they can't just put up the other companies content on each companies satellite either. They could consolidate redundant channels, but that would still leave each side with a lot of content the other side can't get. The whole damned thing is a mess.
The only time I hear stuff I haven't heard in ages or not at all is at 1am.
I was listening to npr and I believe they said, they needed approval from two different wings of the govn't regs. FCC for the communication and another one for the business practice.
xm and sirius is going to have to fight hard to get this one through.
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I wouldn't either. But I think that's the worry about there being no competition. They can essentially snag people with the current base fee for the basic music channels, and keep all the genre stuff for other little fees here and there to nickle and dime you to death. I don't know about you, but I would have a very big problem going from XM back to regular radio, and would be very likely to snag a subscription compatible MP3 player and just get my music that way instead. No commercials, extremely genre and decade specific channels, etc make it very worth my money and make it very hard to go back to the over commercialized mish mash of garbage on FM ever again.
Oh, and this was a comment made just last month in regards to FCCs view on such a merger.
FCC Nixes Prospect of Sirius-XM Merger
Jeffrey Yorke, Radio and Records
JANUARY 17, 2007 -
Message to Wall Street warriors excited about the prospects of a merger between Sirius Satellite Radio and XM Satellite Radio: Stuff a sock in it. It ain’t gonna happen.
FCC Chairman Kevin Martin didn’t use those exact words Wednesday morning (Jan. 17) when he chatted with reporters after the commission’s monthly open meeting, but he made it clear that FCC regulations created when the satellite radio service was conceived more than a decade ago clearly state that “two satellite radio operators [must] remain in place,” Martin said.
Dreams of a Sirius-XM merger are currently fantasy, created by the vivid and overworked imaginations of a slew of Wall Street analysts, who have been bouncing merger theory after merger theory off each other, both firm-to-firm and in weekly, sometimes daily, notes to investors, for months, without much regard for regulatory Washington. The dreams became louder recently when both services cut subscriber forecasts as sales began to level off during the holidays.
While no merger plan has been filed with the commission, Martin said the FCC would “look at anything that comes before us.” But he noted that there is “a prohibition on one entity owning both of those licenses” and he reminded reporters of how the commission rejected the proposal merger between the two satellite television companies to merge in the summer of 2004. In fact, that proposal was rejected by a pro-consolidation oriented panel of commissioners in less than 60 days, a world speed record in Washington regulatory terms.
On the topic of payola, Martin echoed others in calling for a “clear and transparent method of radio promotion” and said “the commissioners are trying to decide what is the most appropriate thing for us to do” in reaching a consent decree with radio operators that have been the subject of the payola investigation carried out by the State of New York’s Attorney General’s office.
The Commission’s review of media ownership is progressing, albeit slowly. Martin said he hopes the commission will hold its next public hearing on media ownership sometime in February or March, depending on the commissioner’s schedules, but no geographical location has been decided upon. He noted that there are four more meetings around the country proposed but no schedule has been drafted.
In November, the agency announced that it had commissioned 10 different studies on media ownership to be conduced and Martin on Wednesday said the results of those studies are expected to begin arriving at the FCC “sometime this spring.”
people paying money to listen to music on xm/sirius baffle me....buy a mp3 player.
i listen to sirius for the talk radio, sports, comedy, bubba and stern. I had xm in my acura and hated it. If this goes through having a choice between o&a and stern in the morning will be nice.
That's one aspect i'm curious about actually. If they do keep both of them, I wonder if they'll push the live show for O&A to afternoon drive so they aren't competing. I hope they just leave em both alone honestly, they tend to have somewhat different audiences.
I'd try to get them to take at least one of the requests I'd shoot them so my customers could see how easy it is. Not once, those heartless bastards...
i think at this point they dont have the same audience...so...im not sure it would even matter. i imagine they could still be on two different stations and just run at the same time. besides, the way the xm technology is going, by that time they will have tivo-esque abilities to record something while listening to something else. they pretty much have an o&a/ron&fez on demand system as it is now. i was under the impression stern did the same thing.
Perhaps, but I wonder how many of the estimated 14 million subscribers between the two will continue to pay if there is indeed a price hike. I understand that both companies currently charge a monthly rate of $12.95, and it's possible, though probably unlikely that cost will increase, at least in the near future. Just out of curiosity, how many of the XM/Sirius subscribers here would continue to subscribe if there was a price increase?
my buddy (also a member) is tapping out at around 15 bucks a month. i could probably suffer a couple bucks more but, when i get too close to 20, id start to get annoyed. i love me some ron and fez...but especially since i am in range of their now free FM evening show, i might have trouble justifying.