Chicago Tribune, March 26, 2008
By Phil Rosenthal

You know who has benefited most from the costly air war between Sirius Satellite Radio and rival subscription service XM Satellite Radio? It's not listeners.

Howard Stern got a 5-year deal worth more than $500 million to give Sirius an identity. Oprah Winfrey scored a $55 million, 3-year deal to deliver an XM channel. Martha Stewart's 4-year deal with Sirius is said to pay her $30 million plus a cut of the ad money.

Major League Baseball snared an 11-year, $650 million deal with XM. The National Football League's 7-year contract with Sirius pays $220 million.

Without dueling pay-radio services, who will bid up those prices?

The only way a satellite radio outfit pays more than $20,000 for a September game between Tampa Bay and Toronto that's also available on Major League Baseball's Web site is if it's trying to differentiate itself from a competitor.

Both Sirius and XM have music channels. They both have news. It's the proprietary stuff that makes a difference. Take away the competition for that and guess whose price deflates. Sorry, Oprah and Howard.

It's talent agents who ought to be protesting this merger.

Instead, the National Association of Broadcasters is lobbying hard, saying that eliminating competition would be bad for the public. The NAB had no such qualms when it came to radio consolidation a dozen years ago, which makes one suspicious their real motive is solely concern over a potential competitor. But the homogenization of broadcast radio by station groups dumping local talent in favor of syndicated fare has done more harm to broadcasters than satellite radio ever will.

Satellite radio alone isn't the threat to broadcasters. It's satellite radio and iPods and the Internet and phones and whatever new technology comes along to do what broadcasters alone did for decades.

Broadcasters' big answer to this new competition has been HD Radio. Own an HD Radio receiver? Know anyone who has HD Radio?

After the Justice Department signed off this week on the proposed Sirius-XM merger, leaving the Federal Communications Commission as the last regulatory roadblock, Sen. Byron Dorgan (D-N.D.) warned "the American consumer will pay the price."

I'm an American consumer who subscribes to satellite radio. I already pay, in that I can't get everything I want from one service.

The two services, which utilize non-compatible receivers, each have long-term exclusive deals with automakers. DaimlerChrysler, for example, invested $100 million in Sirius eight years ago and that's what it offers in its cars.

I bought a car a couple years ago that had XM in it, so I subscribed to XM. If my new car had been equipped with Sirius, I probably would have subscribed to Sirius. Neither service offers everything I want and if my car didn't have satellite radio, I very likely would have done without.

If family finances tighten up, I still might do without.

Don't get me wrong. Satellite radio is nice, especially on long drives that used to require scanning the dial every hundred miles or so to pick up stations in range. But there's nothing on there anyone absolutely has to have.

Should subscription prices shoot up, I'm more committed to making sure the kids have shoes that fit, which is a concern those of us without our own satellite radio channels still have.

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