A tip of the hat to the observant Tony Jobe who just sent me this press release:
"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."
In a previous post here, I talked about how the rumor of the proposed XM/Sirius merger was the talk of the recent Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas. The merger will have a combined enterprise value worth about $13 billion with about $1.6 billion in net debt.
The merger will face two major obstacles - having to get past the Federal Communications Commission, which has a history in turning down similar deals in the past (i.e., the proposed merger between Dish Network and DirecTV); and the issue of compatibility between Sirius and XM receivers.
If the proposed merger were to go through, it would certainly solve a problem a lot of Audio/Video manufacturers are having by trying to choose between the two satellite formats for their receivers or tuners.
And it will also probably knock a lot of people off the fence - like me - who was having a hard time trying to decide which satellite service to subscribe to. I see a lot of good programming on both systems, but there is a lot of redundant programming on both, as well.
Read the full press release on the proposed merger here.
As more information becomes available, I'll be sure to pass it along.
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