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March 25, 2008
The FCC still needs to approve the merger by the two satellite radio broadcasters, XM and Sirius: This merger has a few major impacts on terrestrial radio, especially HD Radio broadcasts. First, the merger presumes there's enough competition to make it reasonable to allow the two firms to join. The firms argued that Internet radio and HD Radio and "iPods" were enough competition to provide choices to consumers and keep prices lower. Without them competing with each other, they could focus more on making better, cheaper equipment and providing better programming. (It's true that the two firms' doomed themselves by spending ridiculous sums of money for exclusive sports deals--billions in all--without anything like the revenue curve from those customers to justify it.)
The other impact on HD Radio is that the final agreements will likely require certain gimmes to the terrestrial radio world. I'm not sure what those will be yet, but it's likely that XM and Sirius will have to stay out of certain businesses and give certain assurances about their behavior backed by fines.
Of course, the biggest irony of "satellite" radio is that so much of it is beamed from ground stations. Yup, that's right. The satellite operators are allowed to rebroadcast on the ground, and they do in cities where their satellite signals would be just barely above the noise threshold.