A "Sirius" deal for satellite radio

Today, XM Radio and Sirius announced plans for a merger between the two radio giants. The deal is going to face heavy scrutiny by the FCC, and there is still a chance that it will fall through, but it doesn't change the fact that these two "rival" companies have an agreement in place to begin working as one entity in the future.

As a devoted XM subscriber, this deal leaves me scratching my head. Sirius is a mis-managed, mis-guided, money-hemorrhaging #2 competitor that they likely could have driven into the ground had they felt so inclined. Though you can argue that the takeover (similar to WWF buying WCW in 2001) is just that, they are now liable for the over 6 million customers that Sirius has paying for their services.

Not to mention that this now adds even more fuel to the Opie & Anthony-versus-Howard Stern fire. You can be that those two entities are going to have at it for the next few months while this plays out. (By the way, I'm a huge O&A fan and think Howard is the Randy Johnson of the radio biz.)

It will be interesting to see how the X-Sirius-M decides to play this one off. Do all customers get both Stern and O&A? Do you choose them a-la carte? What about the MLB and NFL packages? Premium content for subscribers? I can already see a situation where subscribers are forced to pay extra fees for the programming they want, and to me - having had all the stations that I want for the same flat rate every month - this is a scary proposition.