If you're new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed. If you have any questions, please see my policies page or if you would like to contact me, you can do so here. You can find out more about me here. I sincerely thank you for visiting!

Reuters has a story that Sirius and XM have made a federal filing stating that the merged entity will allow more a la carte options, meaning that customers could subscribe to a lower price point than the current $12.95/mo each company charges.

After Mr. Karmazin’s switcharoo earlier, this actually worries me. The great part about it currently is that my $12.95/mo gets me almost everything that XM has. My concern is that they’ll put baseball up in a premium price point and I won’t be able to get it for the current price that I am paying. The wording of the statement according to Reuters seems like exactly the same winkwink, nudgenudge Karmazin pulled on us initially.

After the merger, customers may elect to receive fewer channels at a monthly price lower than $12.95; substantially similar programming at the existing $12.95 price; or more channels … at a modest premium to the cost of one service, and considerably less than the cost of subscribing to both services

Reading that quickly, one would think that I’ll get the same programming I am currently getting for my $12.95. However, notice that the statement says “substantially similar” programming. What is substantially similar? I’d argue that removing baseball from my package would not be giving me substantially similar service despite the fact that it is a small percentage of the overall channels. That would obviously be what XM/Sirius would argue, that I am only losing a few channels whether or not that is the whole reason I subscribe.

I’m still iffy on the merger at best. I don’t feel like Mel Karmazin has been forthright with anybody, especially the customers. I have a serious problem with that.

See my previous merger coverage here, here, here, and here.