Seen at Access Atlanta’s Radio & TV Talk blog:
The U.S. Justice Department has approved the long-awaited $5 billion merger of XM and Sirius satellite radio companies. Now they must await the Federal Communications Commission to give its thumbs up.[...]
It appears Sirius has the upper hand in this situation so that name may outlast XM. And how they merge channels is up in the air, too. There is talk that subscribers may be able to pick and choose stations in an a la carte situation. I’m not sure how easy that would be technically.
I’ve been a happy subscriber to XM for 5 years now. I subscribed after plug-and-play radios came onto the market (read: one subscription which works in car, at the office, and at home), and after my personal circumstances changed to justify it (read: I started driving longer distances to various sites for work, rather than commuting downtown daily on the bus). Given my eclectic tastes, the blandness of the local radio market up here near Hartford, and my wife’s personal boycott of Clear Channel, XM has been great.
Assuming the FCC approves the merger (which might still be a big assumption), I’ll be sorry to see the XM name fade away, and I’ll be very interested to see how the two sets of offerings are merged. I personally have preferred XM to Sirius, because XM’s stations tend to have deeper playlists (the flip side of that, of course, is how many people prefer Sirius to XM because they “hardly ever hear my favorite songs” on XM), and I’d hate to see that change.
Of course, if I could start receiving BBC Radio 1 without having to get a new receiver, I would be a very happy camper. Bonus points will be awarded if I that can be achieved without Howard Stern appearing on XM-legacy hardware.