Sirius To Purchase XM

[AustinHoya03]

Link

No word yet on how this will affect the BE basketball broadcasts...

[JimmyHoya]

What does this mean for Opie & Anthony and Howard Stern?

[VictorSkyPage]

jimmyhoya said:

What does this mean for Opie & Anthony and Howard Stern?

I was wondering the same thing... there are alot of details they are going to have to work out (with sports as well)..

aside from the inevitable price increase now that theres a monopoly - this should be a great thing.

[Bando]

victorskypage said:

jimmyhoya said:

What does this mean for Opie & Anthony and Howard Stern?

I was wondering the same thing... there are alot of details they are going to have to work out (with sports as well)..

aside from the inevitable price increase now that theres a monopoly - this should be a great thing.

It's not a monopoly if you're talking about the industry of "audio broadcasting". There's still all of normal radio to compete with, as well as podcasts, web radio, etc. Unless you think of "satellite radio" as one industry (which in my opinion is way too narrow a view), then the anti-trust laws shouldn't stop this.

I wouldn't be surprised to see the price come down for a while after the merger. Now that they're done competing with each other, they can try to lower the price enough to make it worth it for your average car radio listener to switch from normal radio.

[HoyaOnBothSides]

bando said:

It's not a monopoly if you're talking about the industry of "audio broadcasting". There's still all of normal radio to compete with, as well as podcasts, web radio, etc. Unless you think of "satellite radio" as one industry (which in my opinion is way too narrow a view), then the anti-trust laws shouldn't stop this.

I wouldn't be surprised to see the price come down for a while after the merger. Now that they're done competing with each other, they can try to lower the price enough to make it worth it for your average car radio listener to switch from normal radio.

Umm..

1) (most importantly) the FCC blocked the EchoStar and DirecTV merger, and TV is wayyyy more competative than radio...

2) Since when does "done competing" mean lower prices? Given, advertising budgets and some fixed costs will be lower, but the main thing they competed on was none other than...price! therefore..

3) The price is already pretty low - certainly it's not going to come down much more (not enough to make "your average car radio listener" think differently about a purchase)

so..what am i saying? keep shorting XMSR and SIRI

[JimmyHoya]

bando said:

victorskypage said:

I was wondering the same thing... there are alot of details they are going to have to work out (with sports as well)..

aside from the inevitable price increase now that theres a monopoly - this should be a great thing.

It's not a monopoly if you're talking about the industry of "audio broadcasting". There's still all of normal radio to compete with, as well as podcasts, web radio, etc. Unless you think of "satellite radio" as one industry (which in my opinion is way too narrow a view), then the anti-trust laws shouldn't stop this.

I wouldn't be surprised to see the price come down for a while after the merger. Now that they're done competing with each other, they can try to lower the price enough to make it worth it for your average car radio listener to switch from normal radio.

Why would you say "satellite radio" is too narrow of a view?

[AustinHoya03]

hoyaonbothsides said:

Umm..

1) (most importantly) the FCC blocked the EchoStar and DirecTV merger, and TV is wayyyy more competative than radio...

2) Since when does "done competing" mean lower prices? Given, advertising budgets and some fixed costs will be lower, but the main thing they competed on was none other than...price! therefore..

3) The price is already pretty low - certainly it's not going to come down much more (not enough to make "your average car radio listener" think differently about a purchase)

so..what am i saying? keep shorting XMSR and SIRI

(1) Do ClearChannel, Infinity, etc. grease the proverbial wheels of government like the cable companies?

(2/3) The primary goal of the new company should be gaining new subscribers (it's like auto parts: if you're not growing you're dying). If the price goes up, I'm certainly not switching to satellite. However, I would not be surprised to see monthly subscription rates stay the same but see a reduction in the price of receivers.

[hifigator]

Unless something was released today, it isn't a done deal. In fact the article in our crappy paper was that the merger is going to have some major hurdles to jump to get the FCC's approval and the overall tone of the article was that it was unlikely to go through.