I'm a Sirius subscriber and am quite happy with it, although I have never listened to XM. I'm excited about the idea of them merging the best qualities of both.

I'm willing to bet there will be a price hike.

Edit: You know what I want out of this? A standalone application to listen online while I'm at the office. I hate keeping a browser open and having to login every time, and I remember seeing an unofficial windows media player plugin that showed you all the currently playing songs on each channel. That was cool, but didn't always work very well.

I am thrilled with this, if it manages to go through.

There was so much overlap between the two that it became a war of exclusives (hmm, this sounds familiar).

As a sports fan, I was locked into Sirius for the NFL, but with the NHL going to XM, I was heartbroken. Now I can be happy again!

If the FCC/FTC allows it, it pretty much gaurantees a price hike, there won't be a competitor to flee to.

There will be much arm twisting by the feds though, these are the only two players in the field, the guv'ment won't like them consolidating.

This merger will not happen. The FCC's original rules creating satellite radio explicitly forbid this.

I believe they will let one or both companies fail first, and even then will prevent the remaining company from buying the assets of its former competitor.

True, but like the article says, they are going to argue that they're not just competing with each other, they're competing with iPods (which are increasingly being hooked up to car stereo systems), as well as terrestrial radio. And they may have a point there. There's no question that an army of lawyers have put a lot of time into this, it's not so simple as "the original rules forbid this, so it won't happen".

I'm excited about the possibility of having the sports from both services available on one service along with NPR. Besides that, who really cares? Throw 3-5 adult rock stations into it, some classical, some kid's channels, and I'm fine with it. Being stuck out here in the wasteland of radio broadcasts, it would take a lot to make it not worth my money. I hate that some car manufacturers offer XM over Sirius or vise versa. XM? I don't want that -- no NPR and no NFL. (For the record I think the NFL sucks for only making the NFL package available on the satellite service). Don't make me pay for that radio system when I'm going to have to self-install Sirius as soon as I get home (Honda).

I think the competition from all of the other media outlets makes a compelling argument. Of course if this goes through I'm almost positive that we'll start seeing pricing schemes similar to cable. Sirius Basic, Sirius Extended, Sirius Sports, Sirius Comedy, Sirius Adult, etc. etc.

If the FCC tries to say no the merged company can just drop one of their licenses and then the opportunity will be there for another company to pick it up and be the new competition.

Clarify this - do you mean you're mad that they're exclusive to one specific satellite radio service? Or does this mean something else?

Karmajay, if they do drop one of their licenses, that means that one company's customers will be instantly stranded. That's probably not going to be an acceptable outcome.

I think they're a game of brinksmanship with the FCC, which has already explicitly said that they cannot merge. They were mooting this idea around a year or two ago, and the FCC chief issued a statement, which was 'no way', but in a lot more words.

I live in Northern VA have an XM radio account and hold Sirius stock. A friend of mine has Sirius radio.

As a consumer I can not be more delighted. Both XM and Sirius come in clear and my only issues have been in some very heavily forested areas. Both play about the same music with the difference being some exclusive channel offering like MLB and NFL.

As far as competition they have a good argument about competing against normal radio. While they do offer a wider selection of content if prices went too high people would just listen to normal radio. Toss in people carrying arround iPods and the like and I do not think it is as clear as this will never happen.

As a stock holder I am happy too. These two companies duplicate each other a lot with just small differences. Cost can be cut by a lot, advertising revenue can go up as they now have 13mil total subscribers, they might actually start making money as oppose to what is going on now.

Currently the plan is to broadcast the same services on each signal. So Sirius radio people and XM radio people have seperate but equal broadcast sort of thing while they change the new brand of radios to receive both signals.

Will this really happen who knows but it is not a bad idea at all for all concerned.

Whoa there. I'm not laughing at the idea. I'm just in a position where I don't see the payoff from signing up for the service.

When cable came in you wanted it because you got away from the roof-mounted antenna and rabbit ears on top of the TV and vastly increased the type of content available. (even today, cable clearly offers far more and varied content than you can get on broadcast). And we Americans were watching hours and hours of TV. So you signed up for cable like you signed up for phone or utility service.

You don't have that kind of competitive advantage with satellite radio. There's a smaller market of people who listen to a lot of radio or need the satellite utility in a hilly area, and a content advantage that's far smaller over broadcast than you have in TV. I'd be willing to sign up if they gave me a good reason, but if I'm listening to it for a half hour or so back and forth to work, it's not something I really have to have.

They are letting all the Baby Bells merge back so who knows for sure if this will happen or not.

The Baby Bells aren't even in the same ballpark when it comes to anti-competitive mergers. We are talking about the consolidation of the only two satradio providers in the US. Despite the recent mergers in 2006 and 2007 there are still a handful of BBs left. One satradio provider, however, is going to be an extremely difficult sell.

As far as anti-competitiveness goes, I agree that the merger is more monopolistic. But in terms of scope and size, the combined sat-radio companies don't compare to the Bells. AT&T's value is at hundreds of billions, compared to the combined XM/Sirius at barely over $10 billion. Based on that idea prognosis, I'd say it's up in the air.

At first I didn't think it'd go through, but there's been a few other recent mergers of comparable size and anti-competitive nature that make me feel like it will happen.

If it was a more mature, profitable industry I'd see it as a no brainer. But given the small suscriber base, the lack of significant public interest in whether satellite radio exists, the alternative methods of content delivery, and an administration which doesn't believe monopolies are much worth worrying about overall, seems like there's at least a significant chance it goes through here.