Absolutely, ever since HD radio reared it's ugly head as a free alternative to satellite I think terrestrial radio opened themselves up for a merger of the two satellite companies. They can't say "choose HD radio over satellite" and not expect some sort of retaliation, they opened the door for this.

Competition is always good for consumers. Companies strive to appeal to new audiences and come up with creative programming and more importantly, competitive pricing. Of course a monopoly in satellite radio won't be good for consumers.

Let's hope this isn't like ClearChannel homogenizing traditional radio and turning it into auto-programmed, advertiser ladened, audio poop.

Both above posters make excellent points and I agree with both. In this case, a merger is good for the music business because competing with each other instead of the other delivery methods was driving both companies out of business. The only way they can survive is as one entity, unfortunately, very much due to the point made by poster #1.

It's all for shit 'cause I ain't dropping $80 on a receiver do-hickey when my iTrip gets the job done...

Competition is not only good, the complete LACK of competition in the world of "terran" based radio is why satellite exists to begin with. Ditto with podcasts.

The debate should be over media consolidation in general and not just XM and Sirius.

HD radio is a competitor to satellite radio? It has commercials, right? No, thanks.

huge corporations are always great for interesting music! yeah!

MONOPOLY!!!

I think it could easily be argued that they are not a monopoly at all. They are competing with terrestrial radio, ipods, CD players etc. etc. You have other options.
I like the content on Sirius better than on XM, but XM has much better sound quality (still bad though) and it is much easier to get XM reception in your house than it is to get Sirius. I would like the technology of XM with the programming of Sirius, so hopefully the merger will be good in that way.

wake me when referring to basic radio as "terrestrial" has stopped...

This is actually a good thing for consumers at first...they are planning a "best in breed" combination of all the channels so the service will actually be better without an increase in price (they have less than 10% of the radio audience now so it is still free radio that is the competitor).
Where they are going to run into trouble getting approval is the leverage they are going to gain with electronics manufacturers. Currently they compete with each other to get their technology into stereo equipment manufactured by the likes of Denon, Sony, Panasonic etc. Once that competition is gone, they can insist the manufacturers pay more or share revenue on components that include the satelite technology.