FCC Setting Conditions For XM-Sirius Merger (Finally)
from the what-took-so-long? dept
It's not clear exactly what Kevin Marin and the FCC have been doing over the last year and a half since XM and Sirius announced plans to merge. The Justice Department gave its approval of the deal back in March. That had already taken over a year, and then everyone turned to the FCC to get its approval. From the length of time it took, perhaps the FCC had just figured that the DoJ wasn't going to approve the merger, and had to scramble to figure out the details before granting (or not) its own approval. FCC boss Kevin Martin has now sent around to the other commissioners his recommended concessions to approve the merger, and it includes things like a temporary ban on raising prices (for a few years) as well as requirements for some channels to be turned over to noncommercial and minority programming. While XM and Sirius eagerly agreed to these concessions (after all this time, they just want the damn thing to be over), other commissioners may try to impose additional requirements as well -- so this might not be over just yet.Thank you for reading this Techdirt post. With so many things competing for everyone’s attention these days, we really appreciate you giving us your time. We work hard every day to put quality content out there for our community.
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Filed Under: fcc, mergers, satellite radio
Companies: fcc, sirius, xm
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Sure they won't raise their prices. But they'll be free to nickel and dime users with hidden fees.
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Re:
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How many channels do you listen to now? More tha 50. I doubt it. If you think the price is to high than go back to am/fm. It's as simple as that for as much you know about the entire merger.
Or perhaps you have NAB ties.
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Why is this such a big deal?
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Shouldn't the people who pay the bill decide on the programming choices?
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jhunters got it nailed
Do you know anyone at all who has sat radio? It's been around for like what.. 8 years now? I still dont know one person with it, nor do I know anyone even remotely interested.
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Re: jhunters got it nailed
Long distance drivers are my guess at those who use it the most and I know my wife and I use XM a lot even in our small Northeastern state. Could they (or especially, we) do without it? Sure. But it is very nice to have if you can afford it. I even listen at work through a receiver (USB connected) or through the Internet.
But it absolutely IS NOT a monopoly, that we do agree on for sure.
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Re: jhunters got it nailed
Can you tell I want this merger to happen?
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Re: jhunters got it nailed
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Re: jhunters got it nailed
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I use XM
I do agree that it is a luxury and not a monopoly.
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non-commercial and minority
Come to think of it, what do they mean by non-commercial anyway? The only advertising on the "XM" stations (music, sonic theater, old time radio, etc.) is for other XM stations, their website, etc.
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Delay
Or wanting to, but not seeing any reasonable grounds to, forbid the merger, the FCC deliberately dragged its feet purely to delay it.
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WTF - What's the delay??!
BTW - What is AM radio? Wasn't that something from the 19th century? ...and FM wasn't that from the 20th?? Since its initial broadcast I've been XM and could care less about AM/FM or that RDS B.S. personally; I'm with the times, not stuck in the past.
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You would think so, but my guess is, that's exactly why everyone has dragged their feet on this. The FCC is far too used to being in control of what gets said, shown, or aired, and a model where the customer gets to choose that is simply irrational (or worse - irritating) to them.
As for "some old guy": there's millions of us. Just because you aren't interested doesn't make the medium itself disinteresting. I wonder if you still use rabbit ears.
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Merger
When I want music on the road, I turn on my mp3 player and listen to what I like.
The trouble from what I see is the music industry crippled SatRad devices and this has limited they're usefulness to me for the cost of the service.
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Re: Merger
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XM Radio is Awesome . . .
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noncommercial and minority programming....
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XM / Sirius Merger
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Space
Along with various international treaties on frequency co-ordination, and US rules from the FCC on available frequencies for space to ground radio service aka satelitte radio.
So just cause you have $$$ don't mean you get to shoot off your rockets at will... $$$ helps, A LOT, but theres still going to be a lot of red tape to slog thru.
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Re: Space
Uhh, yeah, that most definitely falls under the "CONTROL BY GOVERNMENT where none is needed" part of the comment you reply to. If we truly had a free market (Read: the US does *not* have a free market), than anybody with the $ could put up a sat and start a competing service..
There is no such thing as a monopoly in a free market, anything we have now that could even be close to being considered a monopoly is such solely because of govt. regulations.
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Cool
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Concessions????
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FCC
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