Oh for the love of God, now what?
Surely by now you’ve heard about the long-delayed (to put it mildly) XM-Sirius merger, which is really more of a Sirius buyout of XM, but let’s not nuance ourselves to death. So yeah, now it looks like the merger won’t be allowed to take place unless the combined company agrees to set aside 25 percent of its bandwidth for minority and non-commercial broadcasts. If you’re a satellite radio fan like me, it’s easy to get annoyed at that, but life’s too short to freak out over the demands of our Precious Regulators.
The 25 percent threshold was put forward by Jonathan Adelstein, a commissioner at the FCC, the same FCC whose boss already gave the merger the go-ahead some time ago. While that request sounds a little silly&mdsh;why should the companies be told what to broadcast?—as a consumer I do like his idea of preventing price increases for the next six years. (I said as a consumer: I know that price restrictions hurt the company’s ability to do business, but if I can save a few dollars, why not?)
You do know that this merger will never happen, right?
These demands are ridiculous. The only people making a stink about this are those threatened by the deal. SatRadio delivers a great product for little money. The NAB knows this and also knows that they deliver a ton of CRAP for free and if I don’t like the terms of the service I can always drop my subscription.
Also, let’s demand other merging companies make concessions, too. It’s too late now but we should’ve make Exxon/Mobile agree to not raise gas prices for three years, and we should have demanded AT&T wireless and all the companies they merged with provide acceptable coverage to ALL the states where they do business.
Well said. Maybe its just me, but I was under the impression people paying for satellite radio could protect themselves. You know, by not paying for the product if they feel taken advantage of.
And yes, his 25% demands are insane. And extremely annoying. That’s like saying BMW has to offer a car for $5,000.00.