XM AND SIRIUS TO MERGE

Wow.

Although it was rumored for a long time, I never thought it would actually happen. It is reported as being a "merger of equals" where the heads of both companies will have a role in the new merged company. The CEO of Sirius will be CEO of the new company.

Not very many other details are available yet. One of the few things that has been said is that there will be an "a la carte" option, which hopefully means I can opt out of getting Howard Stern and subsequently save some money. I'm not sure what this will mean for subscription costs...I don't really expect a rise in rates, because even though there will no longer be any actual satellite radio competition, it won't be a true monopoly because of the options of listening to terrestrial radio, CDs, iPods, etc. This all, of course, is subject to approval by Federal anti-trust regulators.

More concern comes from what happens with the hardware. Sirius and XM have very different satellite orbit methods and operate on different frequency bands. I assume that big changes are going to come in this area. Many more details are to come, I'm sure.

I am really looking forward to this merger because although I like XM's programming better overall (and am subscribed to XM), there are quite a few channels on Sirius that I wish I had (Radio Margaritaville, the NFL, NA$CAR...), to the point I at one time considered subscribing to both. It will be incredibly interesting to see what the combined channel lineup will look like. This is all pretty exciting to this satellite radio fan.