Sirius getting serious

Today the Justice Department approved the purchase (merger) of XM satellite radio by its little brother Sirius, creating a company with almost 13 million subscribers, never made a profit, and will have 1.6 billion in debt. See previous posts for some background on the finances of the sat radio industry. Where is the money going to come from? Remember, these companies are losing more than a million dollars a day....each. Oh yeah...it's an all-stock transaction. (today Sirius is $3.70 a share, while XM is worth $13.98) Who needs money anymore?
Somehow, Justice thinks having only one sat radio provider won't be a problem as satellite radio competes with broadcast, CD's, MP3's etc etc. The fact that Sirius/XM will be a monopoly seems to have been lost on them. Sat radio is a unique product, and if anyone believes this merger will be good for us subscribers you need to take a mental health day or 2...or 3.
Let us look at some recent mergers that have bombed...Daimler Benz, AOL Time-Warner, HP Compaq, Glaxo Smith-Kline, Sprint Nextel just to name a few.
The last barrier to the merger is the FCC. If I remember my history, when XM and Sirius were licensed in 1995, it specifically mentioned the companies would not merge. FCC chairman and self-styled morality czar Kevin Martin said "the companies would need to demonstrate that consumers would clearly be better off with both more choice and affordable prices" and "The hurdle here, however, would be high."
That said, the FCC seems far more interested in filling its wallet by collecting fines over Nipplegate than caring about the wallets and blood pressure of 13+million subscribers...who will be on hold for 90 minutes waiting to talk to a script-reading automaton at an Indian call center when their accounts get screwed up. Not if...when. When you're a monopoly, why invest in customer service? Where are the customers going to go, the competition? That's right...there won't be any. Executives claim they'll be 7 billion a year in savings. Isn't that what they said at AOL, Chrysler and Sprint? Of course I'll respect you in the morning.