It's been 70 days since Sirius-XM filed with federal regulators, and yet the merger hasn't even passed the preliminary review process. The FCC has yet to start its 180-day merger-review clock, and that smells like trouble for many.

"This constitutes the longest application-to-clock delay in FCC history," David Trout of M&A Researcher says in a report Wednesday. "There is simply no way to view the delay in a positive light."

And the delay seems to indicate that a decision won't arrive until sometime in 2008. That's cutting it close to election time, when political attention is far more focused elsewhere.

"It seems relatively safe to assume that the intervention -- in the form of face-to-face meetings -- of several politicians and organizations represented by former politicians is slowing the preliminary review process," Trout continued.

This chart illustrates how long this merger review process is taking, when compared to other major mergers:

"Each passing day without the FCC's pleading cycle and review clock being initiated threatens [hopes for] an FCC decision before the end of 2007," Trout writes.

[via TheStreet]

The League of Rural Voters today announced their support for the Sirius-XM merger, joining with several other organizations who have recently publicly supported the merger.

It's an interesting addition to the roster of supporters, because while the prior organizations addressed the FCC's concerns on ethnic diversity in the media - this directly addresses concerns of adequate competition in rural areas.

The League of Rural Voters said the combined entity would offer listeners in rural communities more content options at lower prices than what is currently available from Sirius and XM separately.

"In many rural areas throughout America, commercial radio reception can be extremely limited. Satellite radio has offered listeners in rural areas a robust alternative with hundreds of specialized channels that meet the programing needs of rural America," said Niel Ritchie, the League’s Executive Director. The organization also pointed to rural listeners who depend on satellite radio’s emergency and public safety stations, while terrestrial radio's corporate consolidation has created so-called "local news and weather" service which are actually delivered from offices hundreds of miles away.

One of the key reasons why the DirecTV-EchoStar merger wasn't approved by the FCC was because it was felt that rural communities (areas where an over-the-air TV signal isn't available) would lose out in competitive choices.

It seems that the League of Rural Voters is seeing that the merger would be more of a "standardization" of the satellite radio medium - opening up the exclusive content from both providers under a single subscription.

XM and Public Radio International (PRI) are expanding on their partnership, now to provide the popular interview/call-in show "RadioWest," starting next Monday, June 4th.

Produced by KUER-FM in Salt Lake City, "RadioWest" is an hour-long show hosted by Doug Fabrizio (pictured) - who you might have also heard as a guest host on NPR's "Talk of the Nation."

The show packs impressive roster of guest hosts itself, including authors E. L. Doctorow and the late Spalding Gray, not to mention global luminaries like the Dali Lama and Desmond Tutu.

Doug Fabrizio has been the host and executive producer of "RadioWest" since 2001, and has won numerous awards for the show from organizations like the Society of Professional Journalists, the Public Radio News Directors Association and the Utah Broadcasters Association.

"RadioWest" will air on XM Public Radio (ch 133) weekdays at 1pm ET.

Sirius CEO Mel Karmazin will participate in a keynote discussion at the 2007 Lehman Brothers Worldwide Wireless and Wireline Conference at the Crowne Plaza Times Square in New York City.

The keynote will be at approximately 4:30pm ET, tomorrow, May 31st. A webcast of the keynote discussion will be available here.

Last.fm, the popular social music network, has been acquired by CBS for $280 million in cash.

The UK-based music site has been around for about 5 years, and has over 15 million active users in more than 200 countries. Last.fm's leadership will remain in place and the website will retain it's separate identity.

"This move will really support us to get every track ever recorded and every music video ever made onto Last.fm," said Last.fm founding member Martin Stiksel. "With a strong partner like CBS, this is now within our reach." 

"Last.fm is one of the fastest growing online communities out there," said CBS president and CEO Leslie Moonves. "Their demographics also play perfectly to CBS's goal to attract younger viewers and listeners across our businesses."

This represents the largest Web 2.0 acquisition yet. But beyond that, this is a strong indication as to how fast things are moving lately. The lines of "distribution" are being blurred.

[BBC News via ValleyWag] 

Part two of Slacker's three prong attack on digital radio has just arrived: Slacker Desktop Radio.

Slacker Desktop Radio goes a step further than its Web-based counterpart, with features like a mini-player, visualizations, larger album art and playlists. Eventually, when the Slacker Portable gets released, Slacker Desktop Radio will sync your custom channels to the device.

The Slacker Portable, Slacker Desktop Radio, and Slacker web-app will all work together, updating each other with your custom preferences as you move from one to the other.

 

There's a couple downsides of course, one being that the application is still in beta and as such is pretty temperamental (I had trouble running it at the time of writing this). Also there's no iTunes integration and no support for the Mac (yet). But it's still very early, so hopefully all of that will change.

Once the Slacker Portable, their Premium Radio service and the Slacker Satellite Car Kit is available, many people may be singing an entirely different tune.

[Slacker Desktop Radio via TechCrunch] 

Next Wednesday, June 6th, XM will air a unique special that re-creates the radio coverage of D-Day, with archival reports from NBC’s original radio news bulletins of the invasion.

This incredible broadcast will air, in real-time, starting at 12:41am ET (which was the time of the first airing) and will end June 7th, at 5:45pm ET on The '40s (ch 4). The special will be based on the original NBC radio news reports of the invasion (currently housed in the National Archives) exactly as it was heard almost 63 years ago.

The marathon will also feature music of the era and archival reports from radio commentators of the day, including H. V. Kaltenborn, Merrill Mueller, and the other members of NBC’s news staff.

"Once we discovered that this material existed, we felt we had an obligation to bring it to XM listeners," said Program Director Marlin Taylor. "No one else would undertake such an endeavor and it is our role to keep the music and history of this era alive and available to those living in the 21st century."

Pretty amazing.

There's a couple o' changes going down over at Sirius Blog Radio on Left of Center (ch 26).

First, Sirius has added It's A Trap and Aquarium Drunkard to their repertoire of bloggers. And second, Sirius has moved the timeslot to air at 12-noon ET, with encore broadcasts at 12-midnight ET. So here's the breakdown by day:

• Monday - Gorilla Vs Bear
• Tuesday - My Old Kentucky Blog
• Wed - BrooklynVegan
• Thursday - ProductShopNYC
• Friday - Aquarium Drunkard
• Saturday - It's A Trap

 

Good stuff.

[via ProductShopNYC] 

 

Microsoft has recently been granted a patent for a car stereo that includes a docking station for an MP3 player or some other handheld device.

Earlier this year Microsoft and Ford unveiled Sync, an in-car communications and entertainment system that is expected to be a factory-installed option for various 2008 model year vehicles.

This patent however details a "car stereo including a docking station into which an off-the-shelf handheld computer can be docked," and additionally, it hints towards support for a multitude of devices. The stereo would also include a memory system that will "maintain a record its current state when it is undocked from a particular type of appliance," so when you plug back in, everything starts up where you left off.

Not to be limited by digital audio players, the patent also allows for "another interface form [that] may allow the user to select from resources such as GPS, internet, a printer over USB, etc."

[View Patent (PDF) via Engadget] 

Andretti Green Racing's partnership with XM Satellite Radio has more to do than just talk shows and sponsorships. AGR used XM WX Weather for up-to-the-second intelligence during the rain-soaked Indy 500 as part of their arsenal of tech tools.

While other teams were relying on local weather forecasts to layout their strategies, AGR was using streaming real-time weather data delivered trackside to their team computers. The weather data is overlaid ontop of a GPS map, which then can be viewed in multiple formats. As a result, AGR can adjust downforce, tune the engine, adjust gear ratios, and plan a more informed tire strategy based of various weather data.

"With weather forecast to be a major factor in this year's Indy 500, we're happy to have XM Weather technology available as an additional strategic tool," said Kim Green, co-owner, Andretti Green Racing. "Racing is both science and art, and successful racing requires the absolute best combination of both."

And this same style of continuously updated weather info will soon be available to us everyday folks (in both GPS nav systems as well as in personal handheld form).

"XM is offering the first system that alerts you to real-time weather threats on the road ahead," said Stuart Cox, senior vice president, advanced applications, XM. "You're not just getting the temperature and the forecast for a city. You get the weather that will impact your specific journey, and this information is constantly being updated."

[WhoWon]
Thanks Matt!