Now that the US Department of Justice has approved the merger of satellite radio providers XM and Sirius, the only remaining regulatory hurdle is the blessing of the FCC. That's expected to happen before the end of April by many that regularly follow these kinds of deals closely. So it's pretty clear that there will be one company running sat rad in the US, probably using the names of both services for at least awhile.
What's not known is when new radios will be released that are capable of picking up programming from both XM and Sirius. Or if that'll even be necessary. A somewhat common theory is that pretty quickly there will be a consolidation of a number of "duplicate" channels and those that remain will be offered on both XM and Sirius. Some of the more obvious choices would be things like the talk channels that carry the same programming, the decades music channels, and some of the mainstream-type channels in the big formats like country, rock, and pop music.
While changes are nothing new when it comes to radio, I'm a little concerned about one of my favorites, XM's "60's on 6". Both XM and Sirius offer great personalities on their 60's channels - XM with Phlash Phelps in the morning and Terry Young in afternoons and Sirius with Cousin Brucie on weekends and one weekday evening. Hopefully, the powers that be at Sirius (who will apparently control the new entity) won't just blow up everything labeled XM in favor of what they are most familiar with. Combining the best of both channels would create an even better offering -- and hopefully keep subscribers instead of driving them away.
The thing that most intrigues me about this merger is the possibility to have one subscription that would give access to all the sports programming on both XM and Sirius. Having Michigan football (currently only on Sirius) would be great when traveling outside of the regular radio coverage area. That goes for the NFL and NASCAR too -- and coupled with XM's MLB and NHL channels... there'd be access to just about any game anywhere. My guess is that the marketing potential of this to sports fans (like me) will be huge. There probably are a lot of fans that have held off on subscribing because of the current split in available programming.
While overall I'm glad that it looks like satellite radio will survive now that they'll be able to join forces, I'm still a little apprehensive about losing some of my favorites that are currently on XM. I just hope that the managers of a combined XM and Sirius learn from all the mistakes that regular radio continues to make in only worrying about cutting people and budgets...
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