Monday - March 24, 2008

Let’s Hope There’s a 3rd Company In Start-UpDATE

The DOJ has given satellite radio companies XM and Sirius approval to merge, more than a year after asked for permission. This means the Department Of Justice has looked at the satellite radio market, and determined that the only two companies that exist can now merge and form a monopoly. And that merger doesn’t the old Sherman Anti-Trust Act, or show itself to be anti-competitive. Nope, before we had two companies, competing a new and fairly expensive luxury market, where consumers had to buy expensive special tuners just to listen, and then they had to pay monthly membership fees. Now we’re going to have one company owning the entire market, no competition, and who can say what will happen to the prices. And DOJ says this is a good thing. Gosh, YOU MORONS, no it ain’t!

I hope some other companies are about to get into this game, or else the customers are about to get the shaft. It doesn’t matter if most of them already have plenty of money to spend, nobody is supposed to be able to sew up an entire market in this country. Nor does it matter if both of them have enormous operating costs, and have to merge just to stay alive. Which I haven’t heard, but I wouldn’t believe if I did hear it, considering what one of these companies is paying Howard Stern for his worn out old schtick.

Ah ha, here’s the con:

In its decision, the Department of Justice had to determine whether an XM-Sirius merger was anti-competitive, or if other media companies such as Clear Channel (CCU, Fortune 500), CBS (CBS, Fortune 500), or even Apple (AAPL, Fortune 500) with its iTunes software and iPod music player served as alternate options for music and media customers.

So it’s pretty obvious we have some Luddites at DOJ, who let a bunch of lawyers convince them that one means of musical playback equates to all the others. Yes, Clear Channel owns damn near every radio station around the world. But none of them are digital satellite broadcasters. Oh wait, not true. Clear Channel owns a dozen or so of the stations that broadcast through XM. Sure, you can buy a tune for you iPod and carry it with you. Hey, you can put a CD in your car’s player too, or just roll up the windows and sing yourself happy. Apples and Oranges, people, apples and oranges. This is a little chip at our freedom, and it doesn’t taste good to me.

UPDATE: Brietbart says Sirius is buying XM for $5 billion. Stocks of both companies have risen. This is going to suck for half the merged customer base, because Sirius and XM use totally different receivers.

Gizmodo also covers this, but snarks that the merger might not be able to reanimate either company, since “they were both already on life support”. Hey, if both companies are doing that poorly, where did the FIVE BILLION DOLLARS (thank you, Dr. Evil ) come from??

Posted by Drew458     on 03/24/2008 at 04:15 PM   
Filed Under: • Music • Science-Technology •  
• Comments (1) • Trackbacks(0)  Permalink •  

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