Yesterday, both Sirius and XM filed the required FCC application to transfer their licenses held by both companies for the merger .
In it Sirius-XM state their case for proposing the merger - ultimately arguing that the proposed merger of the two is in the public's interest. For those of you following these merger proceedings, you may notice that the term "Public Interest" keeps popping up - this is essentially the gold standard that the FCC uses when determining changes in policy. Proving that your actions are in the public interest can be done many ways, and XM-Sirius go into details spelling this out for the FCC.
For industry-watchers like myself, there's actually little "news" that comes from reading the application. But there's some fun snippets that should be highlighted (especially for those who don't feel like reading the whole thing).
In arguing that the merger is in the public interest, the mantra of "more choice, lower prices" is repeated. They then outline the tiered packages:
- Consumers who want fewer channels than currently offered will be able to select one or more packages of channels for less than $12.95 per month. These packages will include an attractive mix of music, news, informational, sports, children’s, and religious programming.
- Consumers who want to continue to receive substantially the same channel lineup of either Sirius or XM may continue to do so at the same price—$12.95 per month.
- Sirius and XM customers also will be able to access popular, previously exclusive programming of the other provider for a modest premium over what they are paying now. Under this “best of” option, for example, current Sirius listeners could have access to Major League Baseball and Oprah. Likewise, current XM subscribers could have access to the National Football League and Martha Stewart. In effect, consumers might no longer have to choose between Oprah and Martha Stewart or between Major League Baseball and the National Football League as the combined company will make certain “prime” programming available to subscribers on both networks.
In their argument that there's an abundance of choices of media available to consumers in this "audio entertainment" marketplace - and that the merger will not harm competition in this market - they actually go ahead and quote the NAB:
As the National Association of Broadcasters (“NAB”) explained to the Commission just two months ago, “there can be no reasonable doubt that the current media marketplace is robustly competitive, and indeed exploding at the seams with consumer choices for both delivery mechanisms and content.”
(Touché!)
Oh, and my personal favorite is when Orbitcast was cited as a source within the FCC application itself (woohoo!) when talking about the competition:
For example, Slacker recently introduced an Internet and satellite radio-based service. The service will be received by consumers through a device designed and distributed by Slacker. The Slacker will come with 4-inch color display, will support MP3, WMA, WMV, and MPEG-4 files, and will come with built-in WiFi and satellite reception capabilities. See Introducing Slacker, a new kind of Satellite Radio company, ORBITCAST, Mar. 14, 2007, at http://www.orbitcast.com/archives/introducing-slacker-a-new-kind-of-satellite-radio-company.html
There's a lot more to the application should you have some time in your life that you'd like to kill, so go ahead and check it out. Or, I would highly suggest checking out Satellite Radio TechWorld's take on the application as well, some very good insight there.
Massive congrats on getting mentioned in there, Orbitcast is a great blog, I'm here twice a day... about the same time I check how much my stock is dropping...
DOWN WITH THE MERGER!!!!
That is so awesome they quoted you Ryan. Did you see Mel's prepared testimony yesterday? Your 10k competition stuff -
http://judiciary.senate.gov/print_testimony.cfm?id=2601&wit_id=6184
Congrats on the mention, Ryan.
Go Merger!!
I do love how the FCC looks at "The Public Interest"...
What a joke! When was the last time the FCC did anything in the public interest? Ultimately, they'll do whatever the big media companies (or whoever owns them at the moment) tells them to do. Bunch of lapdogs...
I thought this part was interesting. Not that it matters much in reality:
"The Applicants have entered into a merger agreement under which a wholly owned subsidiary of Sirius, Vernon Merger Corporation, will be merged with and into XM, with XM being the surviving entity of this subsidiary merger. "
Also, has anyone seen the lowdown on how the Slacker is able to pick out a signal on the Ku-band? The reason Ku-band has so much bandwidth is because the receivers use highly directional antennas to pick out one satellite at a time. How does something like the Slacker accomplish this?
Ryan and his staff, which I'm sure numbers in the hundreds, deserve kudos for making it into the FCC filing.
OK, sarcasm off. So, now we know the resulting company (assuming the merger goes through) will be called XM.
Funny, they have details like that figured out but they can't possibly tell us which channels they will keep. Uh huh.
Cough *bullshit* cough.
im not sure reading that XM is the final name of the new compnay--It just says xm will be merged into vernon mergerger corp which will assume the xm name---Makes no mention of sirius itself, just the subsidiary taking on xm name---confusing
Wow, that's awesome Ryan. But when you think about it, it's not a huge surprise. This is BY FAR the place to get satrad news. I'm not even a blog reader in general - in fact this is the only one I visit.
On another note, I think this Slacker service came out at the PERFECT time for those that want a merger. Not only is it another satrad service, but with it's mixing of satellite service, internet radio, and mp3-type capabilities, it's a great support for the argument that there's lots of XM/Sirius competition out there and that the market is about audio content delivery, not just satrad. IMO this is so perfect it's a little suspicious.
Kidding, kidding...:D