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so its official….XM and Sirius are merging

uh oh…as if sattelite radio didnt already spell the inevitable end of terrestrial radio we now have the 2 giants of the industry coming together to form the voltron of mega super conglomerate’s to send all us poor radio stations to our deaths….but dont think that we didnt see it coming, in fact in some kind of weird way, i think we created this monster.

waaay back before sirius and xm were even around, a bunch of hooligans from the radio industry got together and started talking about “radio without boundaries” and “global radio” and while some came up with the idea of sattelite radio as we know it (alot of the members of the board of directors and stockholders are industry exec’s in some of the biggest terrestrial radio company’s) others decided to go the “HD Radio” bandwagon…which i really don’t think has panned out too well…but we are early in the technology’s life-cycle so i’ll give it some more time.

what we will start seeing is cheaper costs in the market for sattelite radio’s and subscription costs, and why wouldnt people jump on that bandwagon? You will be able to pay between 10 and 13 dollars a month to hear Howard Stern, Oprah Winfrey, The all Bob Dylan show, NFL Football, MLB, NBA, NHL, NASCAR and more….that’s simply a deal that terrestrial radio can’t offer. Then in a few years, expect to see the big names like Hannity, Limbaugh, Boortz, Levin and others shooting over to the sattelite guru’s. Then you’ll have your big name morning shows head that way (the one’s that aren’t already there anyways) and you’ll have a product that will be unbeatable…its time that we in the terrestrial radio industry step up and put a more compelling product out there, companies like Clear Channel (shameless plug) are waaaaay ahead of the competition in terms of listener benefit, online presence and more and its going to take realizing that in order to beat the giants of sattelite radio we simply can’t rest on our laurels anymore….we’re not radio stations, we’re audio brands. CC has done a great job of realizing that, and im proud to work for a company that does such a good job in keeping themselves current, others however need to step their game up if they want to survive the coming war….and believe me, war is coming!