Five members of the Minnesota House of Representatives delegation have joined the chorus of legislators calling for more concessions in exchange for approval of the proposed XM/Sirius merger. They called the merged entity a monopoly, and objected to one company having “total financial and editorial control over this important medium.”
They said the precedent set by the FCC in establishing FM radio service should apply here – the FCC set aside 20% of the FM dial (88 MHz-92 MHz of the band’s 88 MHz-108 MHz range). They then asked for 5% extra, for a total set-aside of 25% of the channels the merged entity will operate. The Kevin Martin-approved plan calls for an 8%/24 channel set aside. They noted that combining similar channels could actually result a less total niche service than is currently available on the networks.
“Surely the price of granting a monopoly includes a certainty of independent thought and diverse opinions,” the legislators wrote. The reps, all Democrats, include Timothy Walz, Betty McCollum, Keith Ellison, Collin Peterson and James Oberstar.
RBR/TVBR observation: Will the FCC commissioners play let’s make a deal and start adding requirements to Kevin Martin’s bare-bones proposal? And if they do, just where has Mel Karmazin drawn his own deal-breaker scuttle-the-merger line? Who knows? We remain stunned that the DOJ simply passed this deal through with almost no comment. Hey, why not let Clear Channel and CBS merge, too? They compete with kids carrying boom boxes and lots of other stuff, too, for crying out loud. And how about NBC and ABC? They compete with convenience store closed-circuit services. It’s only fair.
