ON THE XM-SIRIUS MERGER

An uncivil union

Today is another sad day for music. I'm gravely disappointed to hear the news that XM and Sirius are planning to merge.

Even though FCC rules forbid one from buying out the other, their financial problems will probably lead to an approval of the merger, especially with this monopoly-friendly administration. I doubt XM or Sirius stockholders will stop this unholy marriage.

Even though this merger will surely lower both of their operating costs, this money-grubbing alliance can only lead to higher monthly fees in the future, more commercials, and the eventual squashing of voices and artists that satellite radio has managed to introduce into many pockets of the continental US.

I happen to spend a lot of time listening to both XM and Sirius, since I have Sirius in my car and Dima's car has XM. I've listened to so many hours of multiple channels on both companies that I can easily articulate the differences between the two.

Most of the differences are apparent in the channel listings:

• Sirius has The Howard; XM has a very poor substitute.
  
• XM has Air America; Sirius has TalkLeft, which is a horrendous excuse for progressive radio.
• Sirius has chill and downtempo electronic music; XM doesn't.
• XM has movie soundtracks; Sirius doesn't.
  
• Sirius carries NPR; XM doesn't.
  
• XM has a reggaeton channel; Sirius doesn't.
  
• XM has a talk channel devoted to the black community; Sirius has one devoted to the gay and lesbian community.
  
• XM has baseball; Sirius has NFL.

There are also serious differences one can't easily detect on their channel listings:

• For starters, Sirius's music channels are all commercial-free. XM claims to have commercial-free music, but many of the stations have started to play commercials -- and annoying ones, to boot.

• Sirius's traffic/weather channels force me to listen to Phoenix's freeway accidents and thunderstorms before getting to San Diego's. XM has one channel devoted to San Diego.

• Sirius has Boombox, which is, in my opinion, the best music channel in corporate radio history: breaks, hip hop, electronica, mashups, and genre-defying funk. There's no other station like it on XM or anywhere else.

• Sirius also carries additional channels that cross genres: Faction, for example, plays hard rock and hardcore hip hop. Super Shuffle literally plays everything.

• XM has a much better comedy channel; the Sirius comedy channel is often dominated by Jim Breuer's painfully unfunny non-jokes.

• I think Sirius has more uncensored channels; most of the XM channels seem to bleep out the bad words.
  

I personally prefer Sirius over XM because Sirius has the much deeper playlist on most of their rock, pop, and hip hop stations. (During a two-hour drive yesterday listening to XM, I think I heard The Fray on about 10 times on 10 different channels.)

However, XM has steadily improved its catalog over the last two years. And that's what matters.

The obvious point of this rambling post is that the competition between XM and Sirius has forced both to constantly offer more diverse programming, deepen their catalog, cater to specific groups (e.g., there's a Korean language channel on Sirius!), and, to some extent, play fewer commercials.

But after an XM-Sirius merger, I can easily imagine that satellite radio will soon be only marginally better than terrestrial radio, which is like saying that herpes won't be as bad as cancer.

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Update: The Onion chimes in on the matter.

--Junichi