Sirius' 1-year wait to swallow XM is over. They got anti-trust clearance from the DOJ today. Maybe it took the feds a whole year to come up with an argument for approving an actual, ahem, monopoly?
To be fair, sat radio does have competition. And whether the combined entity, now with 17 million subscribers, can actually succeed remains to be seen. Both XM and Sirius were hemorrhaging cash. A superficial glance at their income statements shows more of the same if they join hands. Of course, this is before any cost cutting can begin, which will be their first priority.
As for the competition, sat radio certainly has reason to worry. Terrestrial radio now takes a two-pronged approach to reach listeners: 1) air wave broadcasting, and 2) online [streaming and podcasting]. Broadcasts are free to the listener, while the podcasts are light on commercials (and sometimes commercial-free, as in the case of NPR). Sat radio also competes with the docking of MP3 players - which can act as a kind of TiVo of the airwaves when synced to your favorite radio show podcasts.
Look for terrestrial radio to experiment with less commercials to entice listeners to drop satellite, while evening out the revenue with more sponsored air-time and ad-supported online content.
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