PirateFins

Just announced.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070219/...m_radio_sirius

AP-New York
XM Satellite Radio Holdings Inc. and Sirius Satellite Radio Inc. have agreed to merge, the two companies said Monday.

The deal would consolidate the only two companies in the emerging business of subscription-only satellite radio, and is sure to face tough scrutiny from federal regulators. Investors and analysts have been speculating about a deal for months.

The two companies said in a statement that Mel Karmazin, the CEO of Sirius, would become chief executive of the new company while Gary Parsons, the chairman of XM, would remain in that role.

Localmotion

wow, that is a great move! They both were suffering in the industry.

bamachem

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,252775,00.html

XM, Sirius Agree to Blockbuster Satellite Radio Merger

Monday, February 19, 2007

By Peter Lauria

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XM Satellite Radio Holdings Inc. (XMSR) and Sirius Satellite Radio Inc. (SIRI) have agreed to merge, the two companies said Monday.

The deal would consolidate the only two companies in the emerging business of subscription-only satellite radio, and is sure to face tough scrutiny from federal regulators. Investors and analysts have been speculating about a deal for months.

The two companies said in a statement that Mel Karmazin, the CEO of Sirius, would become chief executive of the new company while Gary Parsons, the chairman of XM, would remain in that role.

AxleIke

As long as they keep the SIRIUS channels, and go to XM DJ's (read: NO DJ's) then i'm happy. When I got SIRIUS, I loved the no commercials, and then they started doing DJ band interviews, and DJ commentary on Bands.

Whenever i ride in my buddies car, with XM, we get all music all the time.

99LimitedKS

AxleIke, that sounds good to me, I want Octane on XM with no DJ's.

I also hope that they do something about the sound quality. It is not near as good as FM at high volumes...... Maybe it is just me but it sounds like there is too much low frequency noise all the time.

midiwall

Don't expect it... what you're hearing are artifacts from the audio compression.

The bandwidth in the satellites from both companies are maxed out, and have been for years - pretty much since day one. But, the public demands more programming, and to do so, XM & Sirius crank up the compression on the stations, which makes room in the uplink pipe for more programming.

They're both "trying" to be good about which stations are getting more compression and bitrate reductions, but it's affecting everything. The talk radio stuff is the worst, the electronic stations are the best, with the rock stations right behind. It's a matter of balancing compression against the high frequency content of the programming.

bamachem

i hope they can do something to boost sound quality and i also hope that this won't lead to price increases for service...