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Subscribers' Options to Change With Merger
Sirius subscribers will still have their Howard Stern.
(By Ramin Talaie -- Bloomberg News)
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As an XM subscriber, will I get Howard Stern?
Yes, but you'll probably have to pay extra. In the letter to the FCC, the companies said that such "premium" programming will cost more. Stern is not identified in the letter, but he is Sirius's biggest draw.
Let's say I want more channels than are available in a family-friendly package but I don't want my children to hear Stern. What then?
Both companies have channel-blocking ability.
If I already have one of the services, will I have to buy a new radio?
If you want one of the a-la-carte packages, yes, you'll have to buy a new radio. The radios will be on the market within three months of the close of the merger, the FCC letter says.
So my existing satellite radio can hold all of these new channels? I won't lose a bunch of channels I like?
Both companies say that they continue to compress the bandwidth of their channels to squeeze more into their spectrum. Though both services will continue to drop and add channels, they do not anticipate wholesale dumping of channels post-merger.
Both services depend on a series of "terrestrial repeaters," or devices that boost the satellite signal in urban areas. But some of them cause interference and the FCC has ordered XM to shut down 50 of their repeaters and fix 50 more. Will this hurt my reception? Will the Sirius signal be dependent on XM repeaters?
Sirius service will not depend on XM repeaters; the two systems do not talk to each other.
But if that's the case, how can I add Sirius channels to my XM service and vice-versa?
Let's say you have XM and want to add Sirius's NFL package. XM will simply take Sirius's NFL game feeds and beam them to your radio on XM's spectrum. The XM and Sirius systems don't need to talk to each other for this function.
