We’ve talked about the debate concerning whether or not XM and Sirius should be allowed to merge a few times. Those who are worried about it creating a monopoly seem to ignore the fact that the market isn’t for "satellite radio" but for audio entertainment — which goes well beyond satellite radio to things like terrestrial radio, HD radio, iPods, podcasts and much, much more. It seems like a no brainer.
However, there’s almost no way to make sense of the testimony of David Rehr, President of the NAB, to the House Judiciary Committee on why the merger should not be allowed. He starts out by saying that the merger would create a monopoly.
However, if that’s true, then it’s not clear why he’s an interested party at all. He’s there representing the terrestrial radio broadcasters — and the more that he complains about this merger, the more that it sounds like those broadcasters absolutely do view the satellite radio companies as direct competition.
In fact, the terrestrial broadcasters have publicly admitted that they face strong competition from satellite radio. If those broadcasters are so worried that the satellite radio firms would "abuse" their so-called monopoly position to raise rates, then wouldn’t that represent a huge opportunity for terrestrial radio to win back listeners?
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Maybe David Rehr should look at the terrestrial radio market before criticizing others. Currently clear channel owns most of the radio stations in the united states they have been highly criticized for their practice yet they keep running their monopoly. Now for some reason their guy feels the need to defend one monopolistic corporation (which even runs some satellite radio stations) against another. Then again these are people arguing about something related to the music industries and we all know how much sense they are making right now (sue your customers and they will come).