Did you miss Artie Lange's appearance on Jimmy Kimmel Live on Friday? No problem. Just watch it below.

Part 1:

Part 2 is available after the jump... 

A recent article in the Washington Post brings to light an open question about a merged satellite radio service: given the limited bandwidth available from either XM and Sirius, how will they be able to handle transmitting each other's content?

Subscribers who have been around for a while have seen channels get dropped in favor of additional channels. The Washington Post article illustrates this with the example of C-SPAN getting the axe. It's a reality of the situation - both XM and Sirius have a limited amount of bandwidth allocated that they can pipe content through.

So when if the merger goes through, and Sirius starts offering a "best of XM" selection of channels (and vice versa for XM subscribers) - what channels will this be at the expense of? While there's duplicate genres across both services, analysts question how many XM or Sirius channels can be dumped before subscribers begin to feel they are getting fewer options, not more.

And that leads me to our biggest fear regarding the merger.

[The Washington Post]
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Chris Reale founder of the Consumer Coalition For Competition In Satellite Radio (C3SR) was interviewed for this week's FMQB eQB cover story, where he describes his views in opposing the merger between the two satellite radio broadcasters.

He has two main concerns: price and programming. And when you boil it down, these are likely the two overwhelming concerns that subscribers - not regulators or investors - will have over the merger. Mel Karmazin has already said that they're willing to lock in pricing over a period of time, but it's the programming that remains the big grey area.

I'm generally in favor of the merger - if concessions are made - but Chris has some very legitamate points, and protecting the consumer is never a bad thing. Read the full interview here for more.

[FMQB]

The Kansas City Star has an article on why the Sirius-XM merger is bad idea. And while columnist Steven Pearlstein paints a bit of a doomsday scenario, he does make a good argument as to the ramifications involved if the merger should go through.

First the doomsday scenario: Clear Channel will buy every radio station it possibly can, Apple will buy companies that challenge the its dominance, Comcast will merge with Time Warner, and CBS/NBC will merge. All because the FCC/DOJ would determine that the digital marketplace provides enough competition.

While slightly over-dramatic, it's a valid point he's trying to illustrate, and probably the most compelling one against the merger. Precedence. What precedence does allowing this merger set for other media companies? It's the future implications that likely will be a major consideration with regulators. If we take distribution out of the picture (remove the "satellite" from "satellite radio"), then what's prevent CBS/NBC from claiming that YouTube provides significant competition? What's to stop Clear Channel from claiming competition from the iPod?

This will definitely be a mental hurdle that will need to be considered.

[Kansas City Star]

The Washington Examiner has a very interesting piece on the NAB is so gung-ho against the XM-Sirius merger. While NAB is crying that the merger would create an unfair competitor, the numbers just don't add up:

• Sirius and XM have a combined annual revenue of $1.49 billion.
  
• Clear Channel, the largest member of the NAB, raked in a whopping $1.97 billion in revenue... last quarter.
• Sirius and XM have nearly 14 million subscribers combined.
• Clear Channel boasts 110 million listeners.

So a single member of the NAB (an organization with a $20 million building in downtown DC and an $7 million annual lobbying budget) earns more money than the entire satellite radio industry combined, and nearly 10x as many listeners.

And yet, the NAB is saying that a merger would harm the "local" broadcast industry. (The term "local" is used to make them out to be "the little guy" - but we all know that terrestrial radio is far from "local" - *cough* voicetracking *cough*).

While the NAB is calling the merger a “a government bail-out to avoid competing in the marketplace,” The Examiner thinks it might be more accurate to say that the NAB is asking for government protection against competition.

[Washington Examiner via The Liberty Papers]