Hispanic group endorses satellite wedding

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The League of United Latin American Citizens (LULAC) has gone public with its support of the merger of XM Satellite Radio and Sirius Satellite Radio. The organization notes several Hispanic audio channels available on satellite now, and looks forward to more after such a merger is completed. "This is obviously important to LULAC and consumers with opportunities and choices," said LULAC National President Rosa Rosales.


"More programming means that the ever diverse American consuming public  can look to satellite radio for news and entertainment." LULAC's Executive Director Brent Wilkes added, "More programming means more jobs – from the on-talent to production crews. And more programming means that the ever creative and entrepreneurial American spirit has yet one more potential outlet and distribution channel."

RBR observation: It hasn't been particularly easy to find advocates in favor of the XM/Sirius wedding, and one of the key objections made by some of the watchdogs we've heard is that it would increase the corporate chokehold on programmers. There would be one gatekeeper, not two, making decisions as to who is and is not included in the channel lineup, eliminating important leverage for programmers in an already difficult environment. It would end competition between two services for programming, allow programming lineups to be consolidated. And it's not like traditional broadcasting and other media outlets are devoid of Spanish-language programming. Anyway, we don't see one single reason to believe that the XM/Sirius merger would suddenly result in a renaissance of Hispanic programming beaming down from satellite.