FCC Nixes Satellite Radio Merger 277
a_nonamiss writes "Doesn't look like Sirius and XM are going to merge any time soon. I'm not sure how I feel about this one. Logically, I know that competition is a good thing for consumers, and monopolies are generally only good for companies. Still, I don't like having to choose a car based on which satellite radio service comes pre-installed, or considering whether I'd rather have Howard Stern or Oprah, because there is no practical way to get both. Frankly, it's probably all this exclusivity that has caused me not to purchase either system." From the article: "Federal Communications Commission Chairman Kevin Martin told reporters after an FCC meeting that the Commission would not approve a merger between satellite radio rivals Sirius and XM Radio... When the FCC initially licensed the two satellite radio companies in 1997, there was language in the licensing barring one from acquiring control of the other... Even if the FCC were to have a change of heart..., it would still have to pass antitrust scrutiny by the Department of Justice."
Go with logic (Score:3, Insightful)
Go with what your brain knows to be true, not what your heart desires for the short-term.
So don't. Either choose your radio service based on what is installed in the car, or have a satellite radio system for whichever system you want installed by a third-party store. Problem solved!
Actually, there's really not a lot of exclusivity between the two services. They both have rock stations, rap stations, country stations, etc. I didn't even know that Oprah had a show on XM, and I only know that Stern has a show on Sirius because of all of the hoopla around him leaving the broadcast airwaves. I think that the NFL prefers one service over another, and past that, I really don't know of anything else except maybe some talk personalities that I've probably never heard of.
So as long as the services are separate, you'll have to live without either Oprah or Stern (neither of which, in my humble opinion, is much of a sacrifice). But each service also has to be price-competitive and service-competitive to keep you from switching. They have to periodically roll out new features and improve the quality of existing features to keep up with the other. And they have to pay Joe Talkshow a decent salary to keep him from going to the other. Those things, again in my humble opinion, are preferable to having Oprah and Stern on just one service.
That antitrust scrutiny is there for a reason, and in this case, it's very well justified.
It's a funny ol' world (Score:5, Insightful)
Regardless of the reasons, it looks awfully funny to those outside.
TIme for a hybrid player (Score:3, Insightful)
Choose your car based on pre-installed satellite radio? That's hard core.
Re:It's a funny ol' world (Score:5, Insightful)
AT&T gives much, much more money to politicians.
Re:Monopolies are none of government's business (Score:5, Insightful)
It's not government's place to care.
Actually anti-trust is one of the few legitimate places for the government to care. Fixing the fundamentally broken corner-cases of capitalism is a fine use of government power.
All government needs to do is enforce contracts that any given set of individuals choose to make among themselves and arrest and punish those who initiate, attempt to initiate, or threaten to initiate physical force or fraud against the person or property of another without his consent.
Okay, maybe your idea of utopia is where all food manufacturers are bought by wal-mart and the contract you "choose" to sign with them is whatever the hell they want because your choice is to sign or starve to death, but for the rest of us sane people, I'd like to prevent that kind of thing even in its less extreme forms.
But thanks for once again reminding why despite feeling strongly affiliated with the principles of Libertarianism i could never, ever call myself one because of just how insane those principles are when taken to the extreme, and just how willing people are to take them to that extreme.
Re:Go with logic (and this decision shows none) (Score:5, Insightful)
In fact, the tin foil hatter in me would probably suggest that big radio conglomerates like ClearChannel are actively lobbying behind the scenes to make sure that Sirius and XM can never join forces - in the hopes that they successfully kill them both, to allow re-entry into the market by those that missed the boat the first time.
Personally, I love my XM, and don't ever listen to local radio any more. More choice, less commercials, NHL radio broadcasts from several different markets every night? Why would I ever go back. Commercial radio listening is dropping like so many "buggy whip manufacturers 3 year outlook" and they know damned well that Satellite is taking a big chunk. (Not all, as others have already suggested, iPods and mp3 players are also changing how people listen to music).
One or the other is going to go belly up, and then what is the FCC going to say? "No, you're not allowed to woo former customers, because that would create a monopoly?"
How stupid is that?
Re:It just doesn't matter... (Score:4, Insightful)
XM Radio truly gives the average American an opportunity to hear music they never would even know how to find, and that's a good thing. I'm willing to pay $10 a month so serious music fiends can play good music without the undo influence of payola and advertiser pressure.
Oh, and yes, I've found tons of artists I never heard of on XM Radio, some so obscure you can't even find it on any common P2P network.
Re:Monopolies are none of government's business (Score:2, Insightful)
We have chosen to enact a government that regulates the free market. We believe it is the government's place to care. If you do not want to participate, you are free to leave. Where you go, or even if you have a place to go, is not our concern.
Fortunately for the rest of us, you do not have the power to force us to enact your system. We'd be living under economic feudalism in no time.
Re:Open standards (Score:5, Insightful)
Forcing a company to alter their product with the force of law is never ethical. Besides, this isn't a service using public airwaves. These are private satellites broadcasting to private subscribers. The government has no place in telling either XM or Sirius what they can and cannot do.
Satalite Radio should be like TV and regular radio (Score:5, Insightful)
Television is distributed in that manner, as well as by cable and satellite distribution companies which are (mostly) separate from the stations.
Satellite radio is weird, because the entity you pay for distribution is the same entity providing the programming.
So, let XM and Sirius form and spin-off a third company that handles the satellite infrastructure.
Let various manufacturers sell satellite radio receivers.
Keep XM and Sirius as separate providers of programming, much like HBO and Cinemax. As a consumer, you can buy one, the other, or both, and get it all on one receiver.
Re:Open standards (Score:2, Insightful)
I'll tell you what is unethical. The government telling me what I can and cannot do with electromagnetic signals that private companies beam right into my house without my permission.
Re:Monopolies are none of government's business (Score:3, Insightful)
Well they're my concern, and unlike your hypothetical corporate-run universe, in my world the government works on my behalf. So yes, desireable end results are the governments concern.
Desirable end results are not a corporations concern, as what is desireable from the peoples' standpoint usually means less-than-ideal profit for the corporation.
Then you are pure evil and have no moral right to exist, because you are willing to endorse the wholesale violation of individual rights.
You only believe in the rights of those with the wealth to pay for them, and you're calling me evil? You endorse the wholesale enslavement of the populace in the name of corporate profit, dress it up as "individual rights" -- which to you means the right to own slaves, so long as they can be coerced into agreeing to it under pain of starvation -- and think you have a moral leg to stand on?
Lasse-Faire capitalism is the same as corporate dictatorship. One leads into the other as naturally as water running downhill. You will have no individual rights, because you will sign them away and become a slave to corporate-owned society -- or die. And this is what you wish for. Seriously, that's despicable.
Re:Go with logic (Score:3, Insightful)
"I think that the NFL prefers one service over another, and past that, I really don't know of anything else except maybe some talk personalities that I've probably never heard of."
Its not that the NFL 'prefers' one over the other, its that the NFL is only on one (Sirius), while other sports (baseball, hockey, college sports) are only on the other (XM). Thats where people get upset over having to choose between one or the other, if you are a big sports fan you have to choose between listening to football or baseball on your XM radio.
"But each service also has to be price-competitive and service-competitive to keep you from switching. They have to periodically roll out new features and improve the quality of existing features to keep up with the other. And they have to pay Joe Talkshow a decent salary to keep him from going to the other. Those things, again in my humble opinion, are preferable to having Oprah and Stern on just one service."
They would have to do all that even without a competing satellite radio service in order to get and keep customers. The fact of the matter is, XM's biggest competitor isn't Sirius, its traditional radio. As it is, you are not going to see many people flocking from one service to another. If you just spent $100 for an XM radio, you are not going to spend another $100 to get a Sirius radio just because they signed a personality you like.
Re:Monopolies are none of government's business (Score:5, Insightful)
Let's look at the concept of rights. Outside of society, there are no rights. I repeat: individuals have no rights. They don't need them. Think about it, if you were alone on the planet, would the concept of rights even occur to you? No. It is only because we operate in a society that my right to swing my fist conflicts with your right not to be hit in the face.
All rights are a compromise, and a contract. You agree to do, or not to do something in exchange for the agreement that others will act similarly. Without the protection of others, your rights would be meaningless. There is no ultimate authority from which to derive a set of absolute rights. There is no natural law which all people will interperate the same way, arriving at the same list of rights. Therefore, rights are what we as a society mutually agree to uphold in each other. No more, no less.
What rights a society chooses to enforce are up to the members of that society. If you don't like it, you are free to leave. But you have no right to force the rest of us to enact your prefered social system. You have basically stated that you feel you have the right to kill those who don't agree with your definition of what rights are important. Good luck with that.
Re:Go with logic (Score:5, Insightful)
Standard broadcast radio and cable TV have competition between channels, not between technologies. Cable has the local providers as well, acting as intermediaries to sell access to the stations to the end users. You don't have to have a separate TV to watch CBS and ABC since they both come in on the same technology.
There's not even a problem selling various levels of access -- you can opt for premium channels or not, and often pick and choose channel-by-channel. Sure, there's "piracy," but the business is still profitable.
Satellite radio needs to adopt this type of competition. The monolithic system it's using now is braindead, for exactly the reason that Sirius and XM would consider merging if they'd been permitted.
Re:Open standards (Score:3, Insightful)
And he'll go to jail. Do you have the slightest idea how these things work?
Yeah, just like how the guy who cracked DVD encryption went to jail, and everyone stopped copying DVD movies.
Re:It just doesn't matter... (Score:4, Insightful)
Oh, and my "ridiculous contract" is like $6/month. I hardly have any cheaper content subscriptions.
I got your logic, hanging right here... (Score:5, Insightful)
We just saw a decade of media consolidation at a level unseen outside of the Kremlin, and all of a sudden, the FCC is gonna start watching out for the consumer? Please.
The FCC has abrogated its responsibility to Americans a long time ago. Their "protection" of the citizens' ownership of the broadcast spectrum disappeared faster than an envelope full of hundreds down Duke Cunningham's (R, CA) jacket pocket. Maybe, just maybe, if a couple of the paleo-liberals like my boy Dennis Kucinich (crazy as he is) put the fear of god back into the hearts of the cake-eaters who currently own the media with his earnest (if improbable, and unworkable) threat of a return to "Fairness" (Fairness! Perish the thought!!) then we might see a few cracks in the walls of the Great Fortress of Trickle-Down Truthiness known as the Media. And maybe, when that happens, we might again see a little daylight between what the consumers of information in this country want and what our government will allow us to have.
Of course, I always hold out the hope that some leaders will emerge that have a few shreds of decency, and that they might get elected, but then again, I'm high.
Re:Choice is a good thing (Score:2, Insightful)
HOWARD STERN and Satellite Radio (Score:4, Insightful)
If you don't like Stern - don't listen!
Actually, his show is far better on satellite then it ever was on terrestrial radio.
If you buy satellite radio (Sirius) I guarantee that you'll tune in to his channel one day, and something on his show will make you laugh. I used to be anti-Stern as well, but really the show is quite entertaining. All the challenging/serious computer work all day can make you want to listen to some fun trash talk. His show can be a de-stresser for me at times. Sometimes the show is dull / sometimes it is absolutely hilarious! Now that it's on satellite, give it a try. I think you can subscribe just to the on-line radio (Sirius has an internet feed). Try it for a month before you buy the hardware.
I go on long drives often (500km-1100km) - it's nice not having to hunt for radio stations while you're driving. Satellite has really changed the way I listen to music while driving. iPod - I have one of those. I'm a busy professional and don't have time to dink around downloading songs or bothering with DRM.
Re:Monopolies are none of government's business (Score:3, Insightful)
Not to get in the middle of this issue, but rather to ask a side question...
You couldn't actually have limited liability corporations without the government getting in the mix could you?
Partnerships, sure. Corporations as persons?
all the best,
drew
Re:Open standards (Score:3, Insightful)
I think the point here is that both stations control all three areas - content, broadcast, and receivers. Look at your television:
Content producers make the stations - so you either have advertising models (NBC, ABC, CBS, Fox, etc) or pay for models - (pay per view, HBO, Showtime, etc)
Middle-men take the various content signals and consolidate them to their network - cable providers, direct TV, phone companies, and now things like Apple TV. Lockouts are put in place by the middlemen to only recieve the channels you're privledged to - HBO but not Showtime, some PPV, etc.
Receivers - This is now either done via the middle-men or now through open standards (CableCard) through your own box (Think Tivo or roll your own computer methods).
So yes, right now the sattelite providers are a vertical monopoly. They control everything from content to receivers, and its no wonder a lot of consumers have not wanted to make the choice between Oprah and Stern. You could say the same thing about Sony & Blue Ray, with them controlling movies, the medium (middle-men) and the receivers. These kinds of monopolies eliminate choice and hinder innovation and competition, which is what the anti-trust laws are all about. If the sattelite companies backed off and just provided the network, letting someone else rent bandwidth from them, they may find that to be a better business model, as more people would buy cheap receivers and try out different pricing plans from different content providers that suited just them (they want Stern but no Oprah but they do want Rush, both the talking head and the band. Ok, maybe that's not a real person but you get the idea
Re:FM or AM? (Score:3, Insightful)
Radio??? (Score:3, Insightful)
Seriously. Wake me up when I can get streaming audio via WiMax in my car. What do you need a satellite for?
Re:Go with logic (Score:3, Insightful)
Fantastic point! Choice is a great equalizer. Let the market decide if the merger is desirable. If both XM and Sirius were available in one device the market could decide by sheer number of those that subscribe to both as to whether the merger should be allowed. If both are subscribed to by x number of folks, it would be obvious if the merger should be allowed. No decision necessary by government fiat. As an even bigger plus, you get AM and FM in the same device.
I bet your hat is shiny. (Score:4, Insightful)
No, it's not like that. A newspaper is an object. By it's very nature, the only place it is is where you put it.
Radio signals are not objects. When you broadcast a radio signal, by definition, it goes EVERYWHERE. That's what makes it useful.
If they don't want me to decode their signal, they shouldn't beam that signal at me.
OK, they don't want you to decode their signal, *AND* they aren't beaming it at you either. The signal is broadcast. It goes everywhere. Since your apparent reasoning is that you should be allowed to decode signals that are beamed at you, and the signal is not beamed at you, I guess we agree that you don't have any inherent right to decode the signal now, do you?
We really shouldn't be talking about decoding the signal in the first place. You're not prohibited from decoding the signal because there's something special about signals themselves. What is being protected is the programming. The satellite company or whoever is providing programming to authorized recipients. The means of transmission happens to be EM radiation. You're not allowed to receive programming transmitted by EM radiation that happens to go through your house any more than you're allowed to receive programming transmitted by cable that happens to be buried in your back yard. And that's a MUCH better example than your newspaper one - it's like a cable company ran a cable through your backyard, and the law requires that you actually pay for cable to decode the signal.
There's also another way to look at this. And that is, the radio spectrum in your house IS NOT YOURS. By decoding signals on spectrum that you don't own without the spectrum owner's permission, you're stealing their spectrum. Remember that owning land doesn't afford you unlimited property rights to all space above and below that surface. Some things - like air - are common, and radio spectrum is one of those things.
Re:I got your logic, hanging right here... (Score:2, Insightful)
Secondly, the Democrats are JUST as bad about corporate contributions as the Republicans are. Don't believe me? I can prove it:
Read a quick write-up I did about this here:
http://blog.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=blog
Not surprised, its happened before... (Score:3, Insightful)
Trouble is, its short-term thinking that doesn't necessarily look at the long-term survival of either company.
Competition is good to keep existing monopolies from getting out of hand and abusing the customer base, but if, thanks to competition and high operating costs, *nobody* makes a profit, then the market itself will die. At worst. Otherwise, its whoever can keep the VC capital flowing until the other one dies, then the monopoly happens inevitably anyways.
Re:Open standards (Score:2, Insightful)
Forcing a company to alter their product with the force of law is never ethical
What about tabacco companies?