Wednesday, February 21, 2007

NY Times: Antitrust Shift May Aid Merger

Many experts agree that the EchoStar-DirecTV deal would have a good chance of being approved in today's environment. There have been alot of changes in the past four years...cable is not their only competitior, there is the internet, and the Telcos. This analogy could be made for satellite radio, for which the consumer has an even broader range of audio choices.

Shift on Antitrust Issues May Aid Sirius-XM Deal
The New York Times, Feb 21, By ANDREW ROSS SORKIN

Mel Karmazin, the chief executive of , made a lot of phone calls seeking advice before he entered into a merger deal with on Monday. Maybe he should have called Charles W. Ergen, the founder and chairman of EchoStar Communications. Mr. Ergen could have given Mr. Karmazin an earful about his failed effort to merge EchoStar with DirecTV four years ago, a deal that seems eerily similar to the one Sirius and XM have proposed. Will the government see things differently this time? Michael K. Powell, the former chairman of the Federal Communications Commission who blocked the EchoStar-DirecTV deal, is not so sure. “I do think it could get through, but I don’t think it’s going to be an easy one,” he said. “It’s going to be incumbent on the companies to demonstrate that the analysis in EchoStar-DirecTV is different.”...read more: here

Labels: merger, new york times, satellite tv, siri, xm