[BC] Siriusly XM

[Chip Fetrow]

Satellite merger good?  No, satellite merger BAD!

Look at what Mel has said so far:

"There will be no increase in price."  However, you have to drill
down to see what he really means.  If you have XM, and stay with XM
only, there will be no increase in price.  If you have Sirius and
stay with Sirius ONLY, there will be no increase in price.

HOWEVER, if you want BOTH, you will get a "discount" for he merged
services.  Seems like no gain for the public -- a minor discount, and
no competition, so no reason to contain prices beyond what they
promise the FCC, and possibly the congress.

"Customers will not need to buy new equipment."  Well, maybe, or
maybe not.  Why should there be two 60s channels?  What service will
drop 60s?  So if you want Howard Stern, and you want 60s music, and
they drop the 60s from Sirius, you WILL need both, you will need new
equipment, and you will be paying $20-22/month for the combined service.

The combined service, RU Sirius, will have to drop the redundant
channels in order to make bandwidth available for more channels, and
better audio on some of the really nasty-compressed channels.  How
can they justify two of anything?  How can they even justify two
channels of the same city's traffic?  Now, imagine if you split time
between Dallas and Washington, DC, and Dallas traffic is on XM, and
DC on Sirius.  New equipment, new HIGHER rate plan.

The rules read, "No merger allowed," and that is the way it MUST be.
If we need more radio, or digital radio, we need to bring back
Eureka-147.

Me?  I don't need satellite radio, I have an iPod.  As soon as I buy
my new Garmin GPS, I won't need radio, I'll get my traffic
information in real time on my GPS via Clearchannel Traffic.  OK,
I'll need those FM stations to stay on the air with their
subcarriers, but at least I won't have to listen.  And I only need
this until TomTom Traffic rolls out in the USA.

--chip

On Oct 22, 2007, at 12:36 PM, broadcast-request at radiolists.net wrote:

>Message: 14
>Date: Mon, 22 Oct 2007 08:19:09 -0700
>From: Robert Meuser <Robertm at broadcast.net>
>
>I will agree with most of your roster except for Lee Abrahms who is
>single handedly responsible for the XM formatic disaster. I can not
>wait for the merger when Mel will fire him and his cronies. Maybe
>after that I can actually listen to XM.