Is the merger between Sirius and XM anti-competitive?
And, will the merger ultimately go through? One of the most vocal opponents of the Sirius/XM merger is the National Association of Broadcasters (NAB), which represents terrestrial broadcasters. The NAB’s most recent attack was directed towards the A La Carte proposal by Sirius CEO Mel Karmazin. The NAB hit back with their own A La Carte study, acrimoniously subtitled, “A La Sham for Consumers.” Why the NAB is malicious in its attack is obvious — it is precisely because of the threat satellite radio poses to its terrestrial counterparts that the NAB is fighting tooth-and-nail to defeat this merger. Yet, in a twist of logic, and in light of the competitive threat to its core business, the NAB is claiming that the Sirius/XM merger is a monopoly. But how can that be? After all, a monopoly is defined as an “exclusive control of a commodity or service in a particular market, or a control that makes possible the manipulation of prices.” As a consumer of both terrestrial, and more recently, s
