Is Mel Sirius?

Todd Chanko | November 27, 2006, 05:31 PM

I was there when Mel said it. In fact, I was somewhere else where Mel said it, too. Come to think of it, Mel Karmazin, CEO of Sirius, has been saying it pretty loudly and clearly for a while: that Sirius & XM should confess the obvious and merge, fer crying out loud. Let’s not forget that Mr. Karmazin is a rough and tumble New Yawkuh, and proud of it.

Mel’s ruminations about a possible merger have an impact on a related media platform: satellite TV. Echostar and DirecTV had explored a possible merger in 2002 until the FCC quashed it. But John Malone’s recent interest in swapping his 19 percent stake in News Corp. for the latter’s 38 percent ownership of DirecTV have revived speculation about such a merger.

In both cases, the program offerings are essentially the same. True, Sirius has Howard Stern, in the same way that DirecTV has NFL Sunday Ticket. But in order to compete, both XM and Sirius have to offer, for example, Bloomberg Radio, while both Echostar and DirecTV must provide ESPN. Yet, if Howard Stern were enough to drive subscriptions and reduce churn, Mr. Karmazin wouldn’t be floating a merger of rough equals – proving that programming is largely commoditized. Non-programming attributes, such as signal coverage, hardware features and customer service – and, of course, price – are the true differentiators.

All I want this holiday season, though, is for an oldies station to return to the New York airwaves – as in FM. Cousin Brucie? He’s on Sirius!