Rome Burns! Space Policy Neros Fiddle!

Me neither!

BTW, here is a good anthology site for information about the Satellite Radio industry.

http://www.orbitcast.com/

— Donald

Just to be clear, I wouldn’t pretend to handicap whether the regulators will approve the merger, or what conditions the regulators will attach to the merger. I have no insight into that world, and this deal is rather new territory anyway. Your preferred scenario may very well win out in the end.

FWIW…

Just to be clear, I wouldn’t pretend to handicap whether the regulators will approve the merger. I have no insight into that world, and this deal is rather new territory anyway. Your preferred scenario may very well win out in the end.

FWIW…

Perhaps most telling was Griffin’s statement to the effect “I’m not worried about the Moon right now. I’m worried about replacing the Space Shuttle.”

Ultimately, I’m a believer in competition (far more so, I sometimes think, than some of the folks here on the political right), and I see few benefits and many dangers in the advent of ever larger corporations and the consequent reductions in variety and competition.

— Donald

From a financial perspective, neither company is near bankruptcy, but neither company is profitable or predicting profitability soon. Unless there’s a merger, it appears that one or the other company will eventually be driven out of business. Again, as a subscriber, I’d prefer to retain most of my current service’s content in a merger rather than risk losing it all in a bankruptcy a couple years down the road.

Same goes for any capital I have in either company as an investor (although I’m not an investor in either company). I’d much rather be an investor in a profitable cable company with local monopolies, for example, than in a satellite radio business with two, near-equal, non-profitable competitors who are knocking each other and my stock value senseless with new customer acquisition costs.

No doubt this will mean fewer comsats and launches in the near-term, but this business was always going to be a small fraction of the overall comsat market. Over the long-term, one, healthy, merged satellite radio company will probably provide greater opportunities for network and coverage expansion (e.g., international expansion) than one bankrupt loser and another, near-bankrupt survivor.

Don’t get me wrong — I’m all for head-to-head market competition. But sometimes the market just doesn’t support it and a different market model is needed. After many futile years of chasing profitability at both companies, I think that’s the case here.

My 2 cents… FWIW…

Regarding the Sirius / XM merger, I think this is hardly “tangental,” and has major negative implications for both the media and the space industry. As a shareholder in both companies, and a customer of Sirius (with subscriptions for my partner’s car, home, work, and my partner’s ranch), I see very little advantage for anyone.

I like having the choice, and it’s clear the services are different. (The majority of people who have a choice by not getting it with their car choose Sirius.) If one company were to drop the BBC, for example, I could go to the other one. Also, as pointed out in Av Week, if the services combined, they would probably go with XM’s newer satellites (which will last longer), and may abandon Sirius more effective constallation (which, by looking straight down on the United States requires far fewer repeaters and works better in truly rural areas).

More importantly for us, such a combination would reduce the market for both satellites and launch vehicles.

Since both companies have stated up front that they are viable separately (and I see no reason to doubt that), they should remain separate.

— Donald