Is this a threat to sirius and xm?

YES - YES - YES -

Leet the two companies merge and then file a single bankruptcy petition. Current management of each company has destroyed the two separate broadcasters. Sirius just threw a major distributor pary for thousands of Dollars and had a presence at MERA. XM is sending its execs to Hollywood for the Grammys, its manager of independent sellers/retailers to the Super Bowl and to MERA for declining retail sales.

Circuit City and Best Buy couldn't sell there way out of a paper bag when it comes to retail.

Let Slacker come in and destroy them both.

I don't think it's a direct threat just yet- this thing isn't exactly taking the world by storm- but the statement "Credit to Slacker for making sure they secured the proper rights before launching" is pretty funny, especially since "the labels" didn't want anything to do with digital distribution. Now 'the new model' is in place, but it may be too late to save them.

Slacker smacker. No one I know would even know what this is.

The ipod killed the portable market. Face it, NOBODY wants to carry around a phone, an ipod AND a portable Slacker. Thats why Apple did the iphone. Thats the future. And XMs deal with the cell phone companies is the way to go.

Radio is still radio. And a merged Sirius/XM will dominate radio once the dust settles. People want live music, news and sports. Wifi is for laptops and thats about it for now. People want a RELIABLE signal when listening to radio.

If the merger goes thru...once XM and Sirius works out the synergies....it will be the dominant radio format. It won't replace the ipod...which Slacker is trying to do(and will fail). Plus sat radio in cars, on cell phones etc. It wins hands down.

We just have to get this merger DONE ALREADY!!!! Mel should seriously sue the FCC for taking this long. Its really criminal behavior. It's so obvious now to even the most retarded of folk that the NAB is AFRAID of a united sat radio company. Thats why they spent 9 MILLION friggin dollars last year to keep them apart. The longer this merger drags on the more they bleed. Thats why the NAB is still bribing and blocking and doing whatever they can to extend this forever.

It better be approved this month or legal action should be taken on behalf of the shareholders of both XM and Sirius. :-)

First commenter, are you kidding ? Expenses in the 'thousands of dollars' are not going to make or break these companies. The have market caps in the Billions. I might not agree with how they spend their money, but come on....get real.

I don't look for anything to happen on the merger for a couple weeks. The NAB convention is next week, and the lilly livered commissioners won't want to approve the merger and then go out there and have to explain themselves. If they are going to deny the merger, that could happen this week so they can go to the convention and get their backs patted by the broadcasters.

If I were Mel, I wouldn't be threatening to sue...that's a loser and it antagonizes the regulators. Instead I'd go to Kevin Martin and let him know that I expected a favorable decision within one week, or I'm announcing a price increase. Inform him that I expect XM to follow along with the new higher price. The two companies can not sit around bleeding any longer.

Finally, I don't get the buzz for ICO or Slacker. ICO has a single satellite going up, and as far as I know, no ground based broadcast facilities. For a quick start they are going to have to buy their content.....where from ? XM and Sirius ? Who knows. Where are ICO's deals with car makers. Remember that XM is part OWNED by GM and Honda. Do you really think the car makers are going to put in the ICO equipment and undercut their own business ? Not for free, that's for sure.

Slacker is a bigger joke. It's not a publicly held company so financial data is hard to come by, but if XM and Sirius have multi million dollar programs of advertising, retail infrastructure and car maker deals, how do these guys propose to compete ? Direct sales on the web ? Please! More likely they are positioned to be bought out by someone. XM? Sirius ? Apple ? Who knows....but I don't see a long term strategy here. If XM / Sirius had the money, they should buy Slacker just to get the record company contracts.

Just one guys opinion, but we should stop buying all the hype from the other companies that are where the Sat Rad companies were 8 years ago when money was easy to borrow.

No we are talking! Goodbye satrad not only have you run yourselves to shit with poor management, using sat's for audio is not a cost effective solution you know it, smart consumers know it. Recentl BS about competition and satrad's game is "merge" MONOPOLY to have consumers pay more for less. NOPE! Good RIDDANCE, hello HD Radio, hello Slacker.

Slacker musically is superior to XM and Sirius any day of the week. I only use satellite radio for sports talk and political talk (which both XM and Sirius do a great job in that department) lately because both the play lists of XM and Sirius have become very dull. Their play lists aren’t deep and for the most part you only hear the hits with an occasional deep track. With Slacker you can select how deep you want on an album and that’s one thing I love about it. Also the ability to skip a song I don’t necessarily care for. With XM and Sirius I have to listen to asinine DJ’s and a very constrained play lists. I welcome Slacker and any other company that can provide a deep play list of music.

At last a real discussion about Slacker. Logic, you have hit on the most important point....XM and Sirius are doing things Slacker can't like live sports, sports talk and political talk. (Yes they could record talk and download it to your box, but that takes time so it can't be real time and interactive).

For music, 17 million people are happy enough with satellite radio, but if Slacker style is the way of the future, what's to keep XM and Sirius from adding slacker like functions into their future units ? Maybe that's the next merge...Sirius XM merged buy slacker and add customized stations as downloads. XM and Sirius plus.....sounds like a winner to me. And XM and Sirius could develop this on their own, they don't have to buy Slacker...but it would be faster.

if people were loving sdars so much they wouldn't need to merge. I don't believe that sdars will ever become a dominant form of radio and will certainly not replace FM. Stop kidding yourselves. 17 million people like it? 300 million people like FM. sdars has been available now for years, when are they going to rule the world?