So what is Sirius/XM going to be like now?

Finally, after 493 days, the longest pending case in the history of the FCC, the merger of XM and Sirius Satellite Radio companies, was approved, according to media reports at 9:30 PM on Friday night, last night:

for more about the announcement, here's the page about it on LBN:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=102&topic_id=3410033&mesg_id=3410033

so, I just thought some people might want to have a discussion of what it's going to look like:

The official page from what is now one company is http://www.siriusmerger.com/

Just a few highlights are




Additional detail

A La Carte – 50 Channels ($6.99)

A La Carte – 100 Channels ($14.99)

Get Mostly Music or Just News and Sports and Save 23 Percent

Discounted Family-Friendly Packages

Best of Both Packages Will Be Available on Existing Radios




They actually don't have any official, post decision announcements on the page yet, but this is probably the first place to go for the official word, when it comes out later today (or whenever they do it). I don't know any dates, but I thought I heard we might have to wait up to 2 months before they actually make any changes.

As a lifetime subscriber, I still haven't heard how any of this deal will affect my plan.

But, in general, I'm excited about all of the new possibilities. Especially being able to get baseball games. There's something about listening to football games on the radio that's just not as exciting as listening to baseball games, that's my opinion. Maybe now, Sirius won't have to broadcast the "FIS World Cup Skiing On SIRIUS", which is clearly a visual medium. Maybe that's me, trying to be a comedian. Skiing on the radio sounds like it could be part of an episode of Seinfeld, to me.


As far as the business scene goes, who knows if it will even save the struggling companies after all of this? Markets don't even open until Monday morning, more than 48 hours from now.

They have had a ton of conditions and restrictions put upon them. I'm not sure what's official, but it sounded like they were going to lose 25% of their stations to stations that serve a public interest, requiring them to just give away airspace to "minority owned" shows that don't even have to pay for a lease. Plus, they have to give up "editorial control". So, now the government has free satellite radio channels that Sirius (or whatever it will be called) can't do anything about.





Wikipedia's Page about it is another good central resource to bookmark if you're interested in this topic:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XM/Sirius_merger

Also, I have been able to post a few things in LBN in the past few weeks about this, so you can check my journal. I'll probably find more to post as time goes by.

thanks
Kire

They need to get at LEAST two full time liberal channels, carrying entire fucking programs in their proper time slots. If that means they have to dump the worthless Lynn Samuels and the almost as worthless Alex Bennett, then so be it. Neither will be missed. Samuels is a fucking PUMAbot last I heard. They should have pulled her off the air already.

I am currently on the $12.95 a month plan, but I really only listen to a handful of stations on a regular basis.

These are the conditions Sirius agreed to:
http://gullfoss2.fcc.gov/prod/ecfs/retrieve.cgi?native_or_pdf=pdf&id_document=6520029738

I personally think the ONLY condition on the merger should have been the combined company lose one of their blocks of spectrum, which would be in the spirit of the original licenses issued to the two companies that said they could never merge - or more to the point never dominate the satellite radio spectrum.

However the merger had to happen or at the very least XM would have failed and maybe Sirius too.

so the company is going to be losing a lot of money

also, that document was dated June 16th, and there has been a lot of pressure to increase the conditions since then.


lose one of their blocks of spectrum? what does that mean exactly? you want both companies to fit all their channels on the same number of channels that one of them had before the merger? Might as well not merge at all, then.

That both XM and Sirius were granted a specific amount of capacity in the S-band, when their licenses were issued it was a condition that they not be allowed to merge.

Most of the content between the two is redundant, you don't need two 80's alternative stations for example, you don't need two angry white asshole stations with the same programs and a large number of stations are just garbage there for no other reason than nothing else needs the space. The value in Sirius and XM are in their exclusive content. Howard, O&A, NBA, MLB etc

The combined rationalized company could ultimately provide a richer service in the same bandwidth.

And bringing the price down can only be a good thing, when you can get a radio for minimal cost and a month of service for less than the average idiot spends on coffee the psychological barrier to paying for radio might be broken, and keep in mind regular radio is only getting worse everywhere in America.

that's very interesting

thank you for elaborating

both services carry Fox News and CNN, off the top of my head

I'll have to do some more research before I can come up with some kind of business theory to respond to that one. It's worth thinking about, though.

Did anyone believe this corporate loving fascist government would Not allow the merger? For real, this is a bush lovers wet dream.

As corporations take over the competition by merging and leaving only one huge monopoly behind, they f**k their customers. It always happens. Look at the oil corporations, look at COMCAST. These corporations become too big to fail and so start putting the screws to their customers. They think no one can compete with them so they overcharge, gouge, cheat, reduce service, treat people like shit and general degrade anything they touch.

When you eliminate the competition, there's no need for quality.

Sirius was going to be the only one left standing, either because they merge with XM or because XM goes bankrupt.

There's plenty you can listen to without having to subscribe. If they f**k us over, we'll vote by saying 'no thanks---I'll keep my $6.99'. If the subscribers go away, the satellite company goes away.

The big change is the ala carte offering and they are selling it as a better choice to save money but you lose stations, so from the companies perspective they come out ahead. I suppose many of us don't use more than 50 stations but having the others always was a plus when traveling and looking for all the weather/traffic updates and the "other" stations I would always search through when on the road for extended periods. I find the ala carte being a company plus not a consumer plus. Which brings me to the Xm stations. We don't get them being a Sirius subscriber. We pay more to add them to Sirius and we pay a lot more to add many to Sirius. So the post that says they welcome baseball, it will cost you. I rather like football as traveling on Sundays is common for me and I like all the games on. I thought that the merger would actually merge the two stations from a programing perpective but it really remains two companies and you pay for each others extra stations.

how is "the ala carte being a company plus not a consumer plus."?

They're going to have to deal with most of their customers paying less now.

Were you trying to say that they were going to cut the weather channels? I'm not sure.

could you elaborate?

Thank you.

If Sirius were to just turn on all the XM channels for their subscribers they would have to pay a massive amount in licensing fees to provide additional channels that would mostly be redundant.

Plus their isn't enough bandwidth in either spectrum block to add the others programming.

ala carte is good for everybody, the consumer isn't paying for channels they don't listen to and the company isn't paying licensing fees on for content an individual customer isn't listening to.

terrestrial radio, ipods, iphones, internet streaming radio

I hope you are having a better morning than you were two hours ago, fasttense

Who are they monopolizing against?

to shout profanities at anybody who will listen

They'll just keep paying their subscription rates for the rest of their lives and buy more subscriptions? No, they'll cancel.

It's not fair comparing it to the oil companies who produce a good that most people need to live their daily lives here in America to get to work and what not. No matter what, satellite radio is never going to be used by more than 10% of the population. They've already seen their big start-up boosts and Sirius will actually lose millions of subscribers if/when Howard Stern leaves.

...for them not to do that to their customers

Instead of two financially failing operations, you now have one big major money loser. The merger doesn't address a fundamental problem of satellite radio and that is stagnant growth and declining interest. Both XM and Sirius threw money away like drunken sailors with little in return and both limp into this situation barely staying afloat. There are still billions in debt with this new company...and no promise that this move with turn things around...and, most importantly, make the new service profitable.

For those in small towns or who do a lot of driving, a satellite radio makes sense, but it hasn't and won't catch on in the big cities. Radio's biggest asset has always been its locality...people wanting to hear a local voice, time, temp, sports score...satellite doesn't deliver that. Also, for many in my generation, radio has always been free...and I'll be damned if I'm gonna pay to hear what I can pretty much find either on the dial or downloaded into my IPOD. Honestly, I can't see any radio network/format that is worth paying even 6.99 a month.

Yes, this deal is loaded with all sorts of conditions and I expect we'll see a lot of budget cutting coming up...currently live formats that will be dropped and more programs imported from existing syndicators like Premier and subsidiaries of the major over-the-air companies. I continue to hear rumors that this now paves the way for both Clear Channel and Citadel to move in to dominate this new service (along with forcing new radio owners to pay for their HD Radio fiasco in the process).

Radio's biggest troubles right now is there are three competiting systems...and continue to see revenues fall through the floor as the recession drives more and more advertising money away.

Cheers...

the conventional radio industry continues to be tone deaf to the reasons for their decline and continues to hang on to the notion that if they can just further maximize the economies of scale they will have a money machine.

Whenever you are working with a fundementally bad idea, that being that you can opperate fifty radio stations for the price of only one and reap massive profits by doing so. Redemption by escalation will only lead to oblivion.

I am from the second largest radio market in America and local radio has become too painful to listen to - if 12,000,000 people can't justify some local quality from the terrestrial radio industry what hope does the rest of the country have?

And that's been it's biggest problem. The same people who ruined radio in the 90's through deregulation and financial hocus pocus are the big players in the satellite game...and they've attempted to use the same "model" here that has led to the current financial disaster its in. Both services started up a decade ago in the dot com boom spending money right and left...making wild predictions of large subscriber numbers and digging further and deeper as the time went by. If you would believe the press releases, by now both services would have at least 20 million subscribers...the number is far less and those people have had to pay a burden of a decade of mismanagement and financial shell games.

There's definately a place for satellite radio but the current model is a long way from getting to that economies of scale. The way to get to that scale is to downsize and cost costs. The millions thrown at a Howard Stern or other big name celebs didn't pan out...and I suspect to reach that "cost efficiency" that is desperately needed, original programming will vanish in favor of exsiting syndicated shows from "coventional" operators like Clear Channel, Citadel and Premier...more cookie-cutter, least-common denomiator formats that are the easiest to sell.

Yes...the state of radio is in real sad shape. I remember when LA had great stations like KHJ, KLOS, KMET and KNAC...those days are long gone as local origination requires hiring talent and doing marketing...and those cost money. It's far easier to hook up to a satellite or computer and no one will "be the wiser". Thank goodness you still have a KPFK and KCRW...refugees in the non-commercial band.

IMHO, radio will "converge"...terretrial, satellite and internet radio will thrive on a common platform...but as long as the "conventional" mindset remains the short term prognosis is not very good.

Cheers...

I won't even try defending the massive sums Sirius and XM wasted on hiring big name talent - although I say that as somebody who hates Howard Stern and wanted to punch-out Martha Quinn and Nina Blackwood 20 years ago I do continue to believe in the core idea.

People continue to self-segregate themselves into smaller and more specific groups and with that comes an expectation that they will only have to watch, listen and interact on their terms. That means if you want to listen to 1980's goth alternative you probably aren't going to settle for a single song every couple of hours on a terrestrial Classic Rock station. Likewise if you are the only liberal in Bumblescum you aren't going to listen to whatever syndicated Rush Limbaugh wannabe your local AM station is offering.

Satellite radio isn't the only avenue to such content - but it ranks a pretty good alternative in that it can blanket the entire continent with extremely diverse content at a much lower delivery cost than other alternatives.

I think a major problem with the satellite radio business is they are too dependent on automobile based subscribers, the revenue of which is split with the automaker, and the expectation that they will highly subsudize an introductory subscription. They have failed to make attractive and inexpensive home and portable devices. My Sirius dock at home looks like a $19.99 boombox from Target and the Sirius Stilleto is the same price as an iPod Touch.

I think we probably agree on a lot here more than we disagree. I believe radio has lost itself a generation through the cookie cutter formats you describe...the corporate structure cut down on both local origination and talent development that has led to a tremendous drain on the creative. Independent music...once the lifeblood of Progressive and Alternative radio is all but outlawed by a system that wants control on the product from top to bottom.

Technology has made it possible for people to bypass radio. It no longer breaks the music as it once did...so what does it have to offer that is different and will attract listeners? The consolidation has turned many once locally programmed stations into satellites of larger franchises and once robust local competition has been stiffled as one company now dominates and the others struggle to pick up the scraps. It's not a pretty picture out there.

I agree that satellite depends on auto sales, but then that's it's biggest advantage. That's where the majority of the listeners are. As you properly note, the costs are now being pressed on the initial subscribers and that there's little incentive for growth beyond those who are curious about the medium. Alas, radio has become that vast wasteland that Newton Minnow warned about a long time ago.

In full disclosure, I'm a strong advocate of Internet radio and have a vested interest in it, but I am also a realist. I bring a lifetime of involvement with radio and have seen it from many perspectives over the years and witnessed some of its most creative moments...and now, sadly, it's slow and painful decline. My hopes are on the new Wi-Fi systems that is untethering this medium that will enable it to stream into car radios, cellphones and other wireless devices...offering a far wider variety of programming, interactive features and opportunities.

Cheers and thank you, again, for some very valuable insights.

n/t

The merged company is not going to be running dual copies of music channels for long. Sound quality will go down as well as they simulcast some XM stations on Sirius and vice versa.

...but, why do you think sound quality will go down because of what you said?

I tend to disagree that that would happen. Could explain it a little more?

Thanks

XM and Sirius each have their own unique broadcasting platforms. These two systems are not compatible with each other, and the merged company has promised that no hardware would be made obsolete because of the merger. So the plan seems to be, at least for the short and mid term, that the merged company will continue running both the XM and Sirius broadcast infrastructures. One company will now own this entire spectrum for satellite radio, but it will remain partitioned in half like it is today. In addition, the combined company has promised to bring some popular channels from the Sirius platform over to current XM subscribers and some from XM over to Sirius subscribers. To do this, they need to simulcast the channel on the other service, so that those radios can pick the channel up. To make room for more channels they need to take some bandwidth from the existing ones, so this will likely lead to lower sound quality. In the future there will be interoperable radios which can tune in both services, but those are not on the market yet.

They now own the bandwidth for all of the signals, it's just a matter of "updating" the channels that each machine receives. They do this two or three times a year at least, as it is. They just did one a month ago. I really don't see how the amount of bandwidth can affect the functioning of the receivers we keep in our cars and houses, etc. That's like saying we would need to buy a new FM radio, if the terrestrial radio down the rode got a new, more powerful antenna.


I'll ask this question on a techie board on Sirius Backstage Forum and get back to you with a link. I was about to say something else, but I could have just been pulling it out thin air.

UPDATE: Here it is: http://www.siriusbackstage.com/forum/showthread.php?t=109320

The amount of bandwidth they have is a fixed thing, so of course it doesn't affect your receiver. It affects the sound quality because they have to increase compression to offer additional channels in the same amount of bandwidth that they've always had from the start. So in my example they could broadcast 5 music channels at 48kbps in the same space as 15 talk channels at 16kbps. It's about the bandwidth allocation to each channel, and sound quality is going to take a hit if they dump a lot of new channels on each service. People have measured the bandwidth allocated to each channel and what XM is broadcasting today already consumes ~100% of their capacity. It fluctuates though because of the sports programming which has fluid bandwidth demands depending on the number of games being covered.

I'm no expert, so maybe someone else better handle the rest of this line of the conversation.

Sounds interesting, though. I'll definitely look out for more about this, though.

And I think that to get any XM programming I would have to buy a new receiver, so at least for a while I am keeping what I have. The few times I have listened to XM, I have not liked the music channels very much. My favorite is Sirius Disorder.

From the front page of www.siriusmerger.com

We guarantee no radio will become obsolete. Your current radio will continue to provide you with the programming you enjoy, whether you keep your current service or change to a new subscription plan.

Maybe I will see what music channels they decide to keep before I make up my mind about this. I love Disorder in particular and I like many others. I see the value in not duplicating channels but I think the music programming might be fairly unique. I am upset with Sirius for only having one crappy Left talk channel and TWO righ-wing talk channels, Sirius Patriot (WTF is up with that name anyway) and FOX talk (which, whether they admit it or not is right-wing).

I might see if I can check out some of the XM programming online before I decide.

will they get prank called every day?

People were complaining that Howard was not as interesting without an enemy like the FCC, now he's going to have 75 different channels he can prank call that are mouthpieces for the FCC. And Sirius management can't fire them, only the FCC can.

It was not the 25% floated recently by Commissioner Adelstein. I think that's more like 10 channels per service instead of 75.

that's good

it was originally supposed to be 24, which is roughly 8%.

where did you hear the final word? do you have a link? I'll probably find it, but where exactly did you get it from? thanks.

sources are important (to me anyway)

dude was seriously in love with his press coverage. very excited that the latest article had his picture, too. dork.

I have XM for baseball. It is a right leaning organization which became abundantly clear when they started POTUS 08. I was very excited to tune in and found it was a right wing filter on everything.