Message to Wall Street warriors excited about the prospects of a Sirius and XM satellite radio merger: Stuff a sock in it. It ain’t gonna happen.FCC chairman Kevin Martin didn’t use those exact words Wednesday morning (Jan. 17) when he chatted with reporters after the commission’s monthly open meeting, but he made it clear that FCC regulations created when satellite radio service was conceived more than a decade ago clearly state that “two satellite radio operators [must] remain in place,” Martin paraphrased.
While no merger plan has been filed with the commission, Martin said the FCC would "look at anything that comes before us." But he noted that there is "a prohibition on one entity owning both of those licenses" and he reminded reporters of how the commission rejected the proposal by the two satellite television dish companies to merge in the summer of 2004. In fact, that proposal was rejected by a pro-consolidation-oriented panel of commissioners in less than 60 days, a world speed record in Washington regulatory terms.
Dreams of a Sirius-XM merger are currently fantasy, created by the vivid and overworked imaginations of a slew of Wall Street analysts who have been bouncing merger theory after merger theory off each other, both firm-to-firm and in weekly -- sometimes daily -- notes to investors, for months, without much regard to regulatory Washington.
On the topic of payola, Martin echoed others in calling for a “clear and transparent method of radio promotion” and said “the commissioners are trying to decide what is the most appropriate thing for us to do” in reaching a consent decree with radio operators that have been the subject of the payola investigation carried out by the state of New York’s attorney general’s office.
Martin said he hopes the commission will hold its next public hearing on media ownership sometime in February or March, depending on the commissioners' schedules, but no location has been decided upon. He noted that there are four more meetings around the country proposed, but no schedule has been drafted.
On Nov. 22, 2006, the agency announced that it had commissioned 10 different studies on media ownership to be conducted, and Martin on Wednesday said the results of those studies are expected to begin arriving at the FCC "sometime this spring."
By Jeffrey Yorke radioandrecords.com
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