There was a very interesting article in the Washington Post this morning about the controversial proposed merger between the country's two satellite radio companies, Sirius and XM.
Reporter Charles Babington spends the bulk of the article debunking most of the promises made by Sirius CEO Mel Karmazin during congressional hearings earlier this month. Quoting outside technical experts and sources from the companies themselves, Babington makes a strong case that Mr. Karmazin was either ill-informed or being less than candid in his testimony when he promised a merged Sirius/XM would offer subscribers gobs more programming on their current Sirius or XM satellite receivers.
But it was another part of the article that got us seriously worried about the judgment of the folks at Sirius.
It involves C-SPAN Radio, one of the first programmers to be signed up by both Sirius and XM. To the displeasure of some subscribers, Sirius has dropped C-SPAN Radio from its service. The problem is that Sirius wants to preempt C-SPAN Radio in favor of sports programming whenever it wants. C-SPAN said no and Sirius pulled the plug.
Sirius Executive Vice President David Frear told Babington that C-SPAN was "not a highly listened-to channel.... We have others that speak to public affairs, including BBC, CNN and Fox News."
Clearly, C-SPAN is rarely as titillating as the steady diet of celebrity crap, car chases and Anna Nichole Smith coverage that fills up much of the air time on CNN and Fox. But we would argue that neither CNN nor Fox comes close to the zealously unbiased political and policy coverage offered by C-SPAN, day-in and day-out. The BBC is a little closer, but still light years away.
As an aside, we don't think it is a very smart tactical move for Sirius to drop the only channel that provides air time to government officials and politicians all day, every day. Is Sirius saying that Congress is boring and uninteresting?
We suggest that Sirius find some other channel to drop in order to broadcast its sports programming. Otherwise, it should change its name from Sirius to Frivolous.
